If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

When shopping online for printer cartridges, most likely we look for the cheapest price and of not at what the website actually has to say in the fine print. Only after being burned with a bad cartridge and no satisfaction guarantee do most of us start reading the small print.

Price is important, after all that is likely to be why we are shopping online in the first place. For instance, if I were to purchase cartridges for my Canon Pixma MP 500 in a mall store I would pay nearly 150% of what I pay online. I can order OEM CLI-8 color cartridges online for only $13.95 each. If I shopped in town I would pay anywhere from $18-22 for the exact same cartridge even in a large box store. So yes, price is an important factor in selecting an online discount inkjet cartridge webstore.

However, when you shop discount printer cartridge websites don’t just price shop. Look for a website that offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee so you are assured of not losing your money in case of malfunction. Make sure that the website is secure so that your private information is not at risk.

Better Business Bureau membership is a great asset for a website; with BBB you can ask for a history of complaints about the site and rest assured that the website is concerned about providing good service and quality products.

Another important feature is live chat. Live chat enables the customer to ask questions and get immediate answers instead of a long wait.

A 100% satisfaction guarantee, live chat, testimonials, cartridge information, cheapest price and excellence in service are what you expect from a good discount printer cartridge website.

In a previous post, we mentioned how laptops and netbooks are going to be hot must-have bargain items come Black Friday. Of course, we don’t recommend snatching up the first ultra-cheap thing that you see the moment stores open. However, considering how many people you will be up against once you are at the store, there will most definitely be not enough time for thinking – it may most probably be all about the snatching.

So what does one do? Do your homework, and think ahead. There are, after all, a whole slew of deals that one can already preview online, or you can even swing by your fave store and check out what they have in store for Black Friday. That way, you can do your thinking and your research before the big day.

As far as Netbooks go, first things first — do you need one or not? If you are looking to replace a rather old computing buddy like I am, then your priority should not be a Netbook. These babies are more destined to provide its users with the ability to perform basic computing tasks – such as word processing and accessing e-mails – on the fly; sort of having the ability to do office work on a rather minute scale, a step up from what a smart phone can do. Netbooks do not have an optical drive and run on less powerful processors, so get a Netbook if you already have a relatively reliable computer at home – a desktop or a laptop – and would simply like the convenience of not having to lug that one around.

Next, think of keyboard size as well as the layout. This is one important Netbook shopping lesson that we learned based on our own experience. Choose keys that, while compact, are still able to provide a comfortable typing experience. There are Netbooks that somehow were able to achieve that. When we got ours, we only though about the Netbook’s size and how it conveniently fit into our purses; when time came for some serious on-the-fly typing, the size got in the way.

Also seriously think about the size of the screen, and how the machine utilizes the space for the screen. We will recommend at least 10”; we have something less than that, and we will be the first to say that a screen less than 10” is not the most comfortable screen to stare at, even if only on the fly.

While the printer in itself is considered a stand-alone accessory of a computer set, it doesn’t mean that it cannot have accessories of its own as well. There are many parts available in order to improve the performance of your printer and by extension, the quality of your prints. From USB cables to paper handling accessories, these parts have a significant effect on your little piece of hardware.

Paper handling accessories can aid you a lot if you’re going to print in bulk, since custom paper trays have a large storage size, sparing you the hassle of having to refill your paper tray over and over again. Some of these accessories even have multiple trays to hold different paper sizes, which can also help if you need to switch paper sizes on the fly.

Printer memory can also help a lot in your printer’s performance, especially when you’re trying to print a lot of pictures in a short amount of time. Having more RAM would mean that your printer would have a lesser tendency to freeze during printing – something that you would truly detest when you find yourself in a hurry to get the final prints.

Printer software is also an important printer accessory, since this can give you a wider range of customization options for your printer. But before you go online and install it, make sure that the software is built specifically for your printer model as well as your current operating system. If it doesn’t, then it will not run on your computer.

While most printers today are connected to the PC via the USB port, it never hurts to have an extra one. You never know when your cable might become defective, so in this case it’s better to be prepared.

We have not even outgrown MS Office 2007, and yet there is a new Microsoft Office slated for release. Maybe a fruitful Black Friday excursion will provide me with the goods necessary to handle such suites (keeping fingers crossed). The Microsoft Office 2010 beta has already been released, so people can start trying it out and see exactly what new stuff Microsoft has to offer.

One of the things we will no longer see on Office 2010 would be the round button used to bring up commands such as saving and printing. What we will be seeing is a more familiar menu convention consisting of a File tab that will bring up a full screen of commands as well as information. This is reportedly called the Backstage view.

A feature that will be new is paste-preview, which will help those who have a tendency to undo paste. The feature will allow the user to see the results of the past before committing. Picture editing tools have also been improved, helping users to easily review and apply cropping as images are inserted into office documents.

Also new is the Text Effects pane, which will provide users with the ability to apply artistic effects, such as fills and outlines, to any text while at the same time still being able to edit the text afterwards.

For Excel, an innovation called Sparklines allows users to create mini-charts within a cell, providing readers with a visual perception of multiple trends across several data sets. When on Powerpoint, embedding a video into a presentation now only requires a couple of mouse clicks or so, making a whole lot easier. And for Outlook, Microsoft acknowledges the importance of social networking sites to most users, adding a feature that can track feeds from social networks.

Canon’s innovative Think Tank System makes it easier for consumers to print more wisely. The Think Tank System is standard in many of Canon’s all-in-one and photo printers. Essentially this system provides for a cartridge for every color as opposed to the designs that make use of only one cartridge containing all colors.
The important advantage of the Think Tank System is that is enables the consumer to only replace the color that is empty, not a whole cartridge that may have unused ink of other colors remaining. Since the consumer only replaces cartridges that really are empty, the Think Tank System is budget friendly as well as being more environmentally friendly than the one tank cartridges that create waste. Canons printer cartridges are easy to replace, simply pop out the empty tank and snap in the new one.
If you are in the market for a new printer, consider a Canon printer to assure you receive the most up-to-date, efficient technology available today. Canon has been making printers with individual color tanks since introducing the technology ten years ago. Canon printer cartridges are filled with very high quality ink for the most vivid graphics and photos; Canon cartridges are consistently superlative. When used in combination with Canon photo paper, the results from Canon Think Tank System cartridges are simply spectacular.
Think Tank System cartridges are equipped with optical ink sensors that monitor ink levels and communicate to your computer when an ink is running low; your computer then generates a message warning of impending empty cartridge status. This warning is very convenient so you can avoid running out of ink in the middle of an important print job.
Canon’s individual color Think Tank System has redefined efficiency in ink cartridge use.