Category Archives: gadgets

new printer! (again)

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in gadgets, geekiness, internet, retail therapy, work

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hp photosmart printer 5520
These home jet-ink printers are basically a joke, and the joke’s on us. You can buy a basic model for about 60€ with ink cartridges included (though they aren’t as full as the ones you buy off the rack) and then subsequent ink packages end up costing almost as much as buying a new printer. Whatever. Looking back I saw that the last printer I bought was almost exactly three years ago, and to be honest, it never worked well (though it worked better than the previous one I had).

This new HP model sounds fantastic. It’s WiFi accessable – no more pesky USB cords – and I can also send stuff to print via email from my iPhone. How cool is that? I also got a special offer at FNAC today with a special 20% off for members, and this particular HP printer also included a “gift pack” of 3 ink cartridges and some photo paper. And so I snapped it up, brought it home, set it up, and will now see how it performs.

Interesting when I read the post I linked to about the previous printer I bought. Back then, just three years ago when I was getting back to work after chemo, it was such a Big Deal to spend 65€ and I even mentioned borrowing from the tenant’s rent deposit to do so. Every penny I spent then was always balanced against this, that and the other. And although I’m hardly rolling in dough now I felt a sense of achievement to just be able to walk into FNAC today and pay cash for this new printer without batting an eye. Good to get a deal though. The ticket price was 99€, but with the 20% discount and the 30€ ink-pack gift it ended up half price.

What was the last great deal you got when buying something?

it’s baaaack…

04 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in computers, gadgets, geekiness

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My good deed for the day was setting up a user account for Peter on Shadow this morning. Because even as bogged down as Shadow is at the moment (must clear out files soon) he is still much faster than Sexy Beast, which is what Peter has been using. And I was rewarded for my time when I was looking at programmes on Shadow to see what was no longer necessary and suddenly saw “Fuentes” and thought… aha! So I copied my Century Gothic files onto Dropbox and then installed them on the Greyhound and I HAVE MY CENTURY GOTHIC BACK!!!

I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. I feel seriously duh. But also so pleased to have all my blogs back to looking as intended. Except now of course I realise that a rather lot of you guys are probably not seeing the sites properly…

But welcome back, Century Gothic. How I’ve missed you!

meet the greyhound

28 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in computers, gadgets, geekiness, retail therapy, work

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I had a feeling this was going to happen this week. On Monday after uploading more photos into Shadow I had less than 10 GBs of hard disk space left and thought that if FNAC put on one of their “Día de Socios” (members’ day) I would go and get a new laptop, as I would get 10% off. Two days later I got a text message from FNAC telling me about the next one and so on Thursday morning I showed up ready to get the steel-blue 15.6″ Toshiba I’d been looking at. And then I saw The Greyhound. It’s the same one that I mentioned here but as it was now in stock I could actually see what it looked like. And I have to say it looks pretty sleek and the cover is also quite attractive, like silver and grey tiny-square graph paper under glass. I think the salesclerk was a bit surprised when I asked him to confirm the specs for me and then said, “okay, I’ll take it”. The entire transaction took less than five minutes. But of course I’d done all my research previously.

I have to say I’m very pleased with the new beast, though it will still take me awhile to get him all set up (bookmarks are taking forever). It’s quite nice having a big screen (17.3″) again and, with all my photos and programmes installed, I still have 470 GBs of hard drive available. Yay! But it’ll take some time to get used to Windows 7. One very annoying thing about it is that it doesn’t come with Century Gothic installed, which is the font I use on all my websites, including this blog. It’s actually quite disturbing to think that everyone on a Mac or using Windows 7 doesn’t get to see my sites as I’ve set them up – in another font it just doesn’t look right and the spacing also goes wonky. So I immediately got online to download Century Gothic, somehow chose a dodgy site in my haste, and ended up with a malicious browser highjacker called Babylon, which was a bugger to get rid of. Thanks to Sledpress for the additional help with Firefox!

Also thanks to Sled for suggesting this name. I’d been going back and forth between a couple of possible computer names, but as this one is grey and sleek and fast “Greyhound” fits. It also fits because Pat used to foster rescued greyhounds, and was as gadget-crazy as I am, so this is yet another way of keeping her in my thoughts.