If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

One generally does not have the time – probably, nor the energy – to go store-hopping on Black Friday. Everyone will have stores on their priority list, depending on the kind of deals and stuff that they would like to enjoy and purchase. In our case, we usually go to two stores on Black Friday — Best Buy and Wal-Mart, in that order.

And as far as doing one’s Black Friday homework goes, we find one site helpful — Black-Friday.net. And for those who intend to troop to the nearest Best Buy or Wal-Mart, here are some of the deals that we will most probably be going for:

Wal-Mart has a huge array of goodies, and you may laugh at us but one of the bins we usually make a beeline for are the DVDs. Prices range from $2 for titles such as Blood Diamond, Casino Royale and I am Legend; $5 for Kung Fu Panda, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Dark Knight; and $9 for Marley and Me, GI Joe and 17 Again. Some Titles, such as Braveheart, Gladiator and Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince are available in Blu-ray for $10.

Wal-Mart will also have sales on home items and apparel, as well as electronics. There is an HP 15.6” Notebook    w/ Intel Processor, 3GB Memory and 250GB hard drive for $298, a Sony Cyber-Shot 10 MP camera digital camera for $79, an Apple 8GB iPod Touch with a $50 iTunes GC for $195, and a 46” Sony Bravia HDTV for $798.

Best Buy’s deals will reportedly include a 13.3” Macbook with 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 250GB Hard Drive and a $150 GC for $999, a Canon EOS Rebel T1iD-SLR Camera for $699, the 8GB iPod 5th generation Nano for $159.97 and the Epson Stylus NX110 MFP for $24.99. Smallville fans can also purchase DVD sets of the show from seasons 1 through 8 for $9.99 per set.

Since early this week, we have been reading about an excited frenzy over big, big discounts from the one company that rarely gives them out – Apple. Something inside just clicked and said — well, this thing looks too good to be true; and experience tells us that when something is that good, then it most probably is just a figment of someone’s imagination, or wishful thinking gone wild.

So, what kind of discounts were we supposed to look forward to from Apple? The discounts will reportedly be available on “Select Apple Stores” – no mention of the online store – starting at 6 in the morning on November 27th only. Consumers can look forward to “up to” 30% off on ALL iPods, 25% off on ALL Macs and 15% of on ALL accessories, Apple software and Apple hardware.

We would have been okay with the “up to,” which means there will probably be a great deal or two on models that people do not really go for all that often, and then 4 to 5 percent off – or even less – on the more popular stuff. But to say that discounts will be given across the board? It will always be on selected models – it always has been; we just don’t think that any company can afford to offer discounts across the board.

And we cannot help but wonder whether Apple stores are prepared to handle an even bigger-than-expected influx of consumers come November 27 if these rumors are, indeed, true; this is considering they run out of regularly-priced items.

We have not seen a feature that absolutely discredits the rumors, nor has any official statement from Apple stores been released as of this writing. If anyone has information about that, we would certainly appreciate a shout-out or a link. For the moment, though, we will personally dismiss these rumors as something not worth watching out for; what about you?

The amount of paperwork a college student requires can be astounding, especially if you’re in a program that dwells mainly on research. Requirements such as your thesis, research papers, reaction papers, and manuals are the things that plague your daily life as a student, and your time can suffer for it. And sometimes, the professors don’t like having these computerized and prefer handwritten output because of the presupposition that it builds character.

Well, many of us students will probably not agree with our professors’ line of thinking, thus our increasing dependence on computer and printer usage. Let’s face it: A printer is not something that a student can live without, and it is often one of the many factors that can determine a ‘pass’ or a ‘fail’.

The first thing that students look for in their printers is their affordability. After all, it would be quite wasteful to spend money on a page that you will probably never see again. The important thing here is for the prints to be readable. If you think you don’t need all those new-fangled functions and doohickeys for your printing needs, stick to a cheap, reliable printer.

In this case, the emphasis is on quantity rather than quality. Printers used in the academic setting are primarily chosen for the number of pages that it can print, and not how high-resolution the prints come out. Chances are that you will print mostly text, and not pictures. Here, you’re probably better off buying a laser printer, which can print fast and can print a lot of pages for your money’s worth.

What about if you already have an inkjet printer and still want to save money while printing? Well, that’s easy. There are several generic brands in the market that are sold at relatively lower prices. Before buying though, make sure that the printer ink cartridge is compatible with your printer. Ask the sales staff or do a bit of research on it to confirm this before completing a purchase.

We have all heard the various ways to save money on printer ink and we’ve implemented them into our home and business printing practices. But what if that just isn’t enough? There is another interesting idea for users who want to save every little bit they can from their high-tech budget: Saving money by choosing an economical printer font; a font that uses less ink than others.

Saving money by changing your font isn’t just a theory. Research has shown that all users — individual printer users and small business environments — stand to save up to $80 a year per printer based on nothing more than changing the default font they use when they print documents. Which font is the most economical of them all? The aptly named Ecofont is designed to minimize ink and toner use, but there is actually one font that is even more toner friendly – Century Gothic. It covers the average sheet of paper with ink to a level of only 3.45% total ink coverage. By comparison, Arial, the most commonly used default font, averages 4.97% coverage. A burlier font like Franklin Gothic Medium hits over 5.5% coverage.

Even though these numbers may look miniscule they do still matter. The costs add up when you realize you may be using 60% more toner on every page you print than is really necessary. This isn’t even considering the reduction in the amount of paper used each month, thus saving more on that printing cost as well. And as always, one of the best ways to save on printing costs is to not print as much, of course. Deciding what is absolutely vital and eliminating superfluous printing can save on out of hand printing costs too.

Google has just released the code for the Chrome Operating System. The Chrome OS is currently available open-source via the Chrome OS project, and the development community has free and open access to it. Included are the current code base, user interface experiments as well as initial designs for ongoing development.

Google intends to have netbooks that are running the operating system available in the market just in time for the 2010 holiday season. When the Chrome OS does break into the market, “all activity will be stored in the cloud”. This was explained by Google product management vice president Sundar Pichai during a technical preview at the company’s headquarters.

What this means is that if for any reason you no longer are able to access your Chrome OS-based netbook (such as if you lose it), recovery of all information is possible as soon as the user will log in to a new machine.

There was no talk of dollars in Pichai’s part, but he did hint that the price range for the Chrome-based netbook will be within what one would expect from such a gadget. He did say, however, that they fully intend to come up with a netbook design that is slightly larger than usual in order to allow for a more convenient viewing and typing experience.

We will have to wait a year, though, for what this Google netbook would look like. But even this early, Google is already saying that they will not be stopping at just netbooks and eventually intends to expand to laptops and desktops.