Julie's Boggle

I should call this one “Tom’s new toy” because he’s been so happy with it, and had loads of fun playing with it since he installed it.

We don’t usually go after the latest and greatest, and in fact haven’t bought any new PC hardware for a while now. Generally we tend to be pretty happy with what we’ve got. But our previous printer had started to become quite tiresome…

To explain, I need a very brief foray into PC networking. Firstly, to note that the old printer needed to be plugged into one of our computers in order to work. And since we bought it (in 2001), the technology has moved on to the point where you can buy printers for home use that don’t need to be plugged into another computer. They can be plugged straight into a network – which we have – and used by independent computers.

It was all very easy for us when the printer co-operated and plugged into our server that lives under the couch in the lounge. That meant they could both comfortably live out of sight and out of the way. But when it decided that it wasn’t up for that game any more , it started to become a hassle.

We do buy a lot of stuff online, but we’ve been stung before by the hefty costs of sending faulty items back by registered mail. So we decided to stop by Tottenham Court Road – where every other shop sells electronic goods – in the hopes of finding both a bargain, and someone who we could return the goods to, in person, if anything went wrong.

After traipsing around TCR for a good long time comparing prices, we finally decided on a slick little Hewlett Packard printer/scanner/copier. We’d toyed with the idea of getting one that faxed too, then decided that for an extra £50 our very occasional fax requirements just weren’t worth it.

Back at home the printer was a fantastic success. It replaces our old scanner that was on Tom’s desk and takes up only half of the space. Tom got it all hooked up and running off his machine, and it is so fast, and so quiet, does good scanning and its photo printing is really impressive.

Big grins all round for a slick little piece of kit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 9:06 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.