I think people who use computers probably have fewer problems, on average, with their computers than with their printers. I've written about printers on a number of occasions: they certainly provide more to write about than computers do. So far.
I've had Epson printers and Canon printers (currently have one of these) and a Dell printer, and dot matrix printers (exceptionally reliable machines, but not much use for the age of the Internet) and some other printer beginning with H (not a Hewlitt Packard).
My brand new Canon printer MG5150 has been announcing over the last day or so that the black ink was getting low - would I like to go online and order a new cartridge? Well, I could have done, but one of the reasons I bought this machine was so that I could buy cartridges from Cartridge World - they're usually better in price, and they do refills.
Anyway, I went to CW today and bought a new black cartridge. I said I thought it was rather odd that the printer seemed to be using the small black cartridge instead of the big one (Canon provides two black cartridges in this model: one that is used with the colour cartridges and one that's your day to day text printing). The bloke behind the counter asked me what I was printing out? I said mostly 'music files' (by which I meant Sibelius files). He scoffed: you can't print music files. Well, that's right - even I know you can't print MP3 files and such. I said it was printed music from Sibelius. He said I should be turning them into pdfs first otherwise they print out as graphics. I said I thought this a little odd, as I'd never had to do this before. He said I hadn't had a printer with two black cartridges before.
Hmmm.
Anyway, I got home only to discover that I'd misread the information the printer had sent me and that it was the large cartridge which had run out. Which meant that the printer was using the large ordinary everyday cartridge for printing my Sibelius files. LOL.
Rang my daughter to see if she could pick me up a large cartridge. She went into the shop and they told her that the factory that produced these cartridges, in Japan, had been demolished in the earthquake/tsunami. No cartridges available. However, they could refill the cartridge but it wouldn't show up on my printer as being full (!)
Well, this was better than nothing, so in the end I made another trip to town (so much for saving petrol) and gave them the cartridge to refill. Told them that I'd made a mistake about which cartridge was being used for the music files, and the feller behind the counter still manage to make it sound as though he'd been right all along. Cheeky beggar!
Showing posts with label canon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canon. Show all posts
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Saturday, April 02, 2011
New rhythms
Second day of retirement and I''m still finding what the new rhythm to daily life might look like. There hasn't been a chance to gauge this yet, as nothing has been quite what might be termed normal, and perhaps that's good. Maybe that's what the new rhythm will be.
Anyway, among other things yesterday involved the purchase of a new printer, since the Dell model that came (if I remember rightly free with the computer I'm currently working on) has not only decided it doesn't like scanning, it doesn't like copying either. At least it used to do copying, but this part of the system seems to have been recently wiped from its skill list.
We'd talked about getting another printer, mainly because the cartridges for the Dell can only be purchased online from Dell themselves, and have to come from overseas (believe it or not). The last lot took over a month to arrive, even though they'd been paid for at the beginning of the order. Furthermore they're fearfully expensive - this is perhaps why the printer is free - and no one is doing refill versions here as yet. In fact, they may not at all.
So we bought a new printer from Harvey Norman, the place where we'd got the last one - which worked tirelessly until it just clogged up its inards one day. This is a Canon Pixma MG 5150. I think it's going to be okay, but when I first tried to print something yesterday - which had both colour and black text in it - the colour printed fine; the black was non-existent.
We went through all sorts of processes trying to discover what might be the problem, and even rang Canon (who, unlike Dell, actually have people on the ground in NZ). She suggested nozzle cleaning and that sort of thing - which hadn't at that point occurred to me (I won't be applying for power engineer jobs in my retirement; at least not in the IT area) - but that made no difference.
There was plainly something wrong with the black cartridge, even though you could detect ink when you tested it out manually on your finger.
I took it back to the shop, and discovered another gent with the same problem. His machine was being tested when I arrived. We agreed on every point, in particular the lack of black print, and finally the person doing the testing in the shop agreed that there was obviously something faulty with the cartridge. In fact there was something faulty with the black cartridge in both machines, but he had to go through the whole rigamarole of testing my machine as well before he was satisfied this was the case. Good grief.
Anyway, I didn't get much chance to check out the printer after that, because I had to go out and play at the first of two concerts at Brooklands Retirement home in Mosgiel.
Today's 'retirement' has consisted of my wife having a birthday, walking down to see my grandson play soccer, (yesterday I walked up the hill from South Dunedin: not far, but pretty steep); buying a couple of folders for more music, and some sox from The Warehouse - only to discover when I got outside that they were the heel-less kind, which I don't wear. So I had to go and replace them.
Back home and preparation for a family picnic out at Mosgiel (again - but not at Brooklands) where we ate and played games and generally had a great family outing. Home for a long overdue snooze, interrupted by some of the people for next week's concert arriving for a practice. (Yesterday I also spent some time with a tuba player who's playing at the brass band comps in Roxburgh next weekend. I'm accompanying him and several others - though not the guy whose music almost made me despair when I first saw it: the bulk of it goes at crochet equals 176, which seems fine for the soloist who only ever plays one note at a time, but is a bit of a nightmare for the accompanist whose flinging notes around all over the place. I was working hard to simplify it and still make it sound reasonable when he rang to say he wasn't going to have time to practice it properly. Great relief.)
After a walk on the St Kilda beach tonight with the dog, we came home and played Settlers with my daughter and her friend. As always, lots of cheating going on from two of the participants (not me!)
Anyway, among other things yesterday involved the purchase of a new printer, since the Dell model that came (if I remember rightly free with the computer I'm currently working on) has not only decided it doesn't like scanning, it doesn't like copying either. At least it used to do copying, but this part of the system seems to have been recently wiped from its skill list.
We'd talked about getting another printer, mainly because the cartridges for the Dell can only be purchased online from Dell themselves, and have to come from overseas (believe it or not). The last lot took over a month to arrive, even though they'd been paid for at the beginning of the order. Furthermore they're fearfully expensive - this is perhaps why the printer is free - and no one is doing refill versions here as yet. In fact, they may not at all.
So we bought a new printer from Harvey Norman, the place where we'd got the last one - which worked tirelessly until it just clogged up its inards one day. This is a Canon Pixma MG 5150. I think it's going to be okay, but when I first tried to print something yesterday - which had both colour and black text in it - the colour printed fine; the black was non-existent.
We went through all sorts of processes trying to discover what might be the problem, and even rang Canon (who, unlike Dell, actually have people on the ground in NZ). She suggested nozzle cleaning and that sort of thing - which hadn't at that point occurred to me (I won't be applying for power engineer jobs in my retirement; at least not in the IT area) - but that made no difference.
There was plainly something wrong with the black cartridge, even though you could detect ink when you tested it out manually on your finger.
I took it back to the shop, and discovered another gent with the same problem. His machine was being tested when I arrived. We agreed on every point, in particular the lack of black print, and finally the person doing the testing in the shop agreed that there was obviously something faulty with the cartridge. In fact there was something faulty with the black cartridge in both machines, but he had to go through the whole rigamarole of testing my machine as well before he was satisfied this was the case. Good grief.
Anyway, I didn't get much chance to check out the printer after that, because I had to go out and play at the first of two concerts at Brooklands Retirement home in Mosgiel.
Today's 'retirement' has consisted of my wife having a birthday, walking down to see my grandson play soccer, (yesterday I walked up the hill from South Dunedin: not far, but pretty steep); buying a couple of folders for more music, and some sox from The Warehouse - only to discover when I got outside that they were the heel-less kind, which I don't wear. So I had to go and replace them.
Back home and preparation for a family picnic out at Mosgiel (again - but not at Brooklands) where we ate and played games and generally had a great family outing. Home for a long overdue snooze, interrupted by some of the people for next week's concert arriving for a practice. (Yesterday I also spent some time with a tuba player who's playing at the brass band comps in Roxburgh next weekend. I'm accompanying him and several others - though not the guy whose music almost made me despair when I first saw it: the bulk of it goes at crochet equals 176, which seems fine for the soloist who only ever plays one note at a time, but is a bit of a nightmare for the accompanist whose flinging notes around all over the place. I was working hard to simplify it and still make it sound reasonable when he rang to say he wasn't going to have time to practice it properly. Great relief.)
After a walk on the St Kilda beach tonight with the dog, we came home and played Settlers with my daughter and her friend. As always, lots of cheating going on from two of the participants (not me!)
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