THE COMPUTER THREAD

[MrTorso]

Anyone go with the "re-manufactured" route with their printer ink?  My old Epson finally bit the dust so I picked up a new one. I still have tons of MST3K covers to print and when I run out of ink I was thinking of trying out the generics at almost a quarter of the price. Just wondering how quality holds up compared to the super expensive OEMs.

[RVR II]

Anyone go with the "re-manufactured" route with their printer ink?  My old Epson finally bit the dust so I picked up a new one. I still have tons of MST3K covers to print and when I run out of ink I was thinking of trying out the generics at almost a quarter of the price. Just wondering how quality holds up compared to the super expensive OEMs.

I had a lot of issues with reman's.. don't last near as long, some didn't work at all, etc..
I get my genuine ink carts on ebay these days.

[MrTorso]

That is too bad. I checked out some reviews from where I buy my DVD supplies and they were mostly positive. The cost of OEM ink is so outrageous. I love this recent FARK headline:




A CISS seems intriguing I am looking around to see if there is any video of one set up for my new printer.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

At least now printers with individual ink cartridges are getting more common.  I always hated spending $50 for a tri-color cartridge when it only ran out of one color.

Just got a new printer a few months ago, HP5514, each color is only $10.

[MSTJedi]

We have a Kodak printer now and while the color is tri-color, it's only $10 for black and $20 for color, so it's a lot cheaper than all the other printers I've had.

[RVR II]

Oh yeay.. My local 'monopoly' internet provider is finally upgrading their modems and fiber-optic lines for faster internet speeds

Comporium is changing the names of its Internet options which were know as packages. The options are "Standard" and will be 10Mbps x 1 Mbps; "Ultra" and will be 25 Mbps x 2 Mbps; and "Elite" and will be 50 Mbps x 3 Mbps.

Residential neighborhoods served by Fiber-To-The-Premises will see higher speeds. The Ultra plan will offer 25 Mbps x 13 Mbps and the Elite plan will provide 50 Mbps x 15 Mbps. The FTTP Standard plan remains at 10 Mbps x 10 Mbps.

And of course it'll cost more but they don't say that anywhere
Don't think I have 'Fiber-To-The-Premisis' yet.. I'll have to check on that when they come to swap out my modem on Thursday..

[Coragale]

Yeah, Qwest played the drug dealer when I signed up with them. I got 6 months of their best service for 30 bucks a month. After that ended, though, if I wanted to keep 40mbps, I'd have to pay more than twice that. 7mbps, ahoy. :/

[Danecho1967]

Apple's next move should be to improve their sync cables.  The ones they ship with their products suck.

[RVR II]

Got my new modem from the phone/cable/internet company yesterday that gives me much faster speeds (went from 15Mbps x 1 to 50 x 3) and I am getting my 50Mbps download speeds but I'm only getting half my upload speeds I should be getting..

Turns out the cable company had the wrong block on my cable line (that had prevented me from getting basic cable channels as well) and put in the 'correct block' which increased my download speeds but didn't help my upload speeds (but also allowed me to get my basic cable channels back - For FREE! ) so it turns out my router may be the issue because it's at least 7 years old and may not be able to handle these new internet speeds.. Is there any truth to that
But for now, I'm satisfied with what I got (including my free cable channels )

[MartyS (Gromit)]

so it turns out my router may be the issue because it's at least 7 years old and may not be able to handle these new internet speeds.. Is there any truth to that

Are you getting the full 50mbps down through the router?  If so then it should be able to do 2mbps up...  If it's an old router that only had 10baset (10mbps) ports then it needs to be updated.  If you have 2 PCs connected to the router move some big files between them to see what the max rate it can handle is.

If you don't have bonded channels on the upload side then it can be really unstable, Comcast just got rid of all the analog channels here and we finally got 3 channels up (had 4 down for a long time).  The upload is now very stable where before it was all over the place. 

[RVR II]

so it turns out my router may be the issue because it's at least 7 years old and may not be able to handle these new internet speeds.. Is there any truth to that

Are you getting the full 50mbps down through the router?  If so then it should be able to do 2mbps up...  If it's an old router that only had 10baset (10mbps) ports then it needs to be updated.  If you have 2 PCs connected to the router move some big files between them to see what the max rate it can handle is.

If you don't have bonded channels on the upload side then it can be really unstable, Comcast just got rid of all the analog channels here and we finally got 3 channels up (had 4 down for a long time).  The upload is now very stable where before it was all over the place.

Hmm.. Ok, yeah my downloads are just under 50Mbps but my uploads will not get above 1.3Mbps.

My downloads fluctuate from 49Mbps to 30Mbps but the uploads stay around 1.3Mbps.
I still get 6 analog channels along with 33 digital channels now since they changed out the cable blocker

[MartyS (Gromit)]

so it turns out my router may be the issue because it's at least 7 years old and may not be able to handle these new internet speeds.. Is there any truth to that

Are you getting the full 50mbps down through the router?  If so then it should be able to do 2mbps up...  If it's an old router that only had 10baset (10mbps) ports then it needs to be updated.  If you have 2 PCs connected to the router move some big files between them to see what the max rate it can handle is.

If you don't have bonded channels on the upload side then it can be really unstable, Comcast just got rid of all the analog channels here and we finally got 3 channels up (had 4 down for a long time).  The upload is now very stable where before it was all over the place.

Hmm.. Ok, yeah my downloads are just under 50Mbps but my uploads will not get above 1.3Mbps.

My downloads fluctuate from 49Mbps to 30Mbps but the uploads stay around 1.3Mbps.
I still get 6 analog channels along with 33 digital channels now since they changed out the cable blocker

I was talking about the DOCSIS system when talking about the number of channels.  You should have a status page on your cable modem that will tell you how many data channels it is using for down and up.  The more channels the more stable the connection.   Another way to tell is the indicator lights, on my Motorola 6121 the lights are green if unbonded (single channel) and blue for bonded (multichannel).  You must be getting some bonded channels down since I don't think a single channel can go above 30 or 40mbps. 

If you still have any analog channels in the area then they may not be using bonding for up channels and you are stuck with one.

Other thing to check is the signal levels, those should also be on the signal stats page on the cable modem.  If you have a long line to pole or a lot of splitters between the pole and your modem the signal gets weak and a single channel struggles.

[RVR II]

Oh I see.. Yeah, I will have to investigate that further.

That may be one of the bugs that they are working on cause mine is not an isolated incident..

[gbeenie]

Apple's next move should be to improve their sync cables.  The ones they ship with their products suck.

Yeah, I bought like a half-dozen from Meritline for about $1 apiece. I REALLY hate not being able to find one when I need it.

[Sicgirl]

A CISS seems intriguing I am looking around to see if there is any video of one set up for my new printer.

Just a warning that the part that actually goes in the printer where the cartridge does seems to give out after a while. It happened to mine and since then I read a few reviews of it happening to different models. It's something to do with the constant pull of the hoses on the cartridge. One day, I walked in to a pool of black ink on my desk. The connection had given out and let all of the ink out of the tank, into the printer and ultimately on to the desk.