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News
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
- Windows XP Service Pack 1 is now
available from Microsoft. If you have XP Home or
Professional, visit their site and make sure that you update
your system. You can find the update
here.
- I want to thank all those that
have changed to comply with the new billing schedule. Just
a reminder that ALL PAYMENTS NEED TO BE RECEIVED BY THE 15TH!
If you are still sending payments after the 15th, please start
sending payments so that they are RECEIVED by the 15th.
Net Watch
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] We are going
to shift gears a bit this month. I'd like to talk about
purchasing products on-line. I still get people looking at
me funny when I tell them that I'm using my credit card to
purchase products over the Internet. The fact is that you
can really lose your shirt if you blindly go buying stuff
on-line. On the other hand, you can catch some real good
deals if you know what to look for. Let's look at some do's
and don'ts for safe and fun buying on-line.
The most important thing to
remember is that a deal "too good to be true" almost certainly is.
Take time to research the vendor that you are thinking about
buying from. Check their site for how they handle returns.
Also do your research about the vendor. Visit
www.BizRate.com
here to check out what other buyers have said about them. You
can really save yourself from a bad experience by putting in the
time prior to purchase.
The safest bets are stores whose
web sites complement their "brick and mortar" store locations.
www.CircuitCity.com,
www.Walmart.com,
www.BestBuy.com are all good
examples of sites that are very safe and have good customer
support because they have physical locations.
One step down from the
www.CircuitCity.com's are
the www.TigerDirect.com's
and other large on-line only e-tailers. Again the most important
thing to remember is to know who you are buying from. Read,
read, read, and if it is unclear to you how they handle returns,
call them. If you cannot contact them easily there is most
likely a reason for it. When you visit
www.TigerDirect.com their
toll free number is on every page. Try finding a phone
number at www.PCShop1.com , an e-tailer located on
www.cnet.com's price list page.
Once you leave the safety of the
"Big Boys" you need to be even more careful. I cannot stress
the importance of research. You have to read the fine print.
I used to really love purchasing products from
www.Ubid.com, a popular auction
based site, until I got burned by the "fine print." I won a
bid on a multimedia kit that included a CD rom, sound card, and
speakers. I only paid $37 for the kit. What a bargain!
I had read the shipping fees ahead of time and was ok with the
$9.99 primary charge plus .95 per pound after that. What I
failed to read was the "estimated shipping weight" of 20lbs!
A good deal just turned sour and there was NO recourse. I've
still bought from UBid on occasion, but I'm sure to calculate ALL
the charges prior to placing a bid. What I've found is that
90% of the time, when all the charges are added up, things cost
MORE at Ubid than if you were to purchase them outright.
Beyond purchasing products I also pay bills, look at my bank accounts, and manage my credit
cards online. All this has made things very convenient. However
trying to keep track of all those user-names and passwords can be a
real challenge. The best advice I can give is that you take
time and do your research. Use sites like
www.cnet.com and
www.CircuitCity.com for
product reviews before you buy. Use the "Brick and Mortar"
stores to try products before you go on-line to find your best
price. You can save money and time and have fun at the same
time!
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Product Review
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] Well our old
faithful photo copier died a couple of months back and to
my regret, I had to go and find a replacement! I really loved
the connected digital copier that we used back in Vermont, but could
not justify the $12,000 price tag, Ouch! I started looking at
less expensive options for a connected device. I talked to
Xerox about what they had to offer. Their entry unit started
at $1600 and seemed to do everything that I needed it to. I
just knew that I could do better.
My next idea was to look at the
multi function leader, HP. Sue and I have an HP PSC 500 at
the house and really like it. It is an ink jet printer, so
it is expensive to run, but HP also makes laser units as well.
I went down to Staples to take a look at what they had to offer.
The prices were about half that of the Xerox but I still thought I
could do better.
 I
moved on to the usual and looked through the web for the right
product. I searched by price and features and came up with an
unexpected winner, the Brother MFC-9700. The MFC-9700 is a 5-in-one unit: Copier, Scanner, Printer, Fax, PC-Fax. Our
office needs a good printer more than a fast copier and this unit
works great. It is a digital copier in that it scans once
and copies many, the fax works the same. By the time it is
done connecting to the fax on the other end it has scanned 6 or 7
pages. It transmits a single page in about 6 seconds to keep
your long distance bills down. The auto document feeder can
manage up to 50 pages and works for the Scanner, Fax, and copier.
We have had the unit in-house for
over two months now. There are several surprises that we
have enjoyed finding. The bundled software is wonderful.
We needed to do a rush typing job for a client. The job was
36 pages and he needed it in about 4 hrs. We scanned the
entire document into the unit via the auto document feeder and the
system automatically launched the OCR software and converted the
entire document to editable text in about 5 minutes. Sue
took the rest of the time to clean up the recognition errors and
fix formatting issues. She LOVES the way it works.
When buying any device like a
printer or a fax, you have to look beyond the initial purchase
price and take into consideration the "Total Cost of Ownership."
The singe best feature that I like about the unit is the cost per
print, only about .016 per print or copy. The HP laser unit comes
in at .026 per copy or print.
The down side to the unit is that
it has limited functionality with Windows XP. This is a real
problem because if you want to benefit from all the awesome
features of the product you need to connect it to a computer
running Windows 98, ME, or 2000.
 We
liked the unit so much that we have also purchased the little
brother, the Brother MFC-5100, for color copies and color prints.
We are just as thrilled with it. The only limitations (as
with the 9700) is that it doesn't work well with Windows
XP, but we are hopeful that Brother will remedy the situation
soon.
We purchased both of these units at
Staples. The 9700 was only $549 before a $50 rebate and the
5100 was $279 with a $30 rebate.
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