OT - New Toy

With incredibly bad netiquette, symptomatic of my quickly fading memory - I forgot to mention 3 things. This new toy, epson Artisan 800. Also, has a function that will turn a photo into a line drawing (coloring book) - fabulous for helping with some design stuff. 3rd thing - DH had me treat myself to new Daylight Ultimate lamp (literally at half price). Now, to find a home in the house for it. I'm now inundated with Daylight lamps - last year I got the artist professional long tube one that goes on my big easel or drafting table ( I asked shop owner to check the price while at Nashville- she came back with it - so I couldn't not take it). Now this one. I think my little Ott light is feeling outnumbered.

Ellice

I am so envious. I have the one Ott and DD and I want to clean up the basement for a "messy craft" area. AKA the painting, the beads. Nothing too fancy, just tables and lighting and something to sit on... C

Well, don't be too jealous - I still have the dust dragons to clean - and other stuff to organize.

Ellice

But a second "daylight" type light would be so nice. DH is currently using mine as a reading lamp (you'd like what he's reading, "Unholy Business", archeology and fraud in the Holy Land)

Cheryl

Ah, well - I have a "daylight spectrum" desk lamp for reading in the bedroom. Costco had one, so I bought it. Got one for the Goddaughter to schlep with her to MIT as well. My handle-carrying Ott lite moves around the house. The Daylight that is the "professional" one - it has to stay affixed to the drafting table or I'll take it to the big easel when it's up again. It's really an artist's light. I am pretty excited about the big standing one. Also because it has the magnifier, and when I use the floor stand, my little magnifier is too short a neck to reach to where I need it usually, and this one on the lamp will help.

The book sounds interesting. I just returned and interesting book called "Diaspora" - a bit academic, but pretty interesting nonetheless.

Ellice

Every so often, the local "Big Lots" has daylight type lamps and I'm buying several next time. One for next to the chair up stairs, one for each child and one for where I decide....

I've just gotten "Unholy Business from DH's hot hands. He was bored by it...

With so many add-ons bonus things with printers, sometimes hard to know to pick one for the printer specs or the extras. I just swapped out one of the Brother mono laser printer for a Samsung Colour laser printer. I did kept the better Brother mono laser printer, but the software included with both are very different. Does make it a little confusing when in a rush. LOL

At least, the inkjets are both Canon so software is generally the same. Main difference in them is one has the scanner while the other is a high-quality photo printer with double-side printing feature [printer turns paper].

Only thing is the price of replacement inks, can get the cheaper ones but then they are half ink level of the pricey ones, then I have had times that it was cheaper to buy new printer than replace inks. Did that for the scanner printer last month, almost half price of new ink.

Yes, I do have 4 printers on the main system. Also 2 drawing tablets; extra lightscribe burner; 5.1 sound system; 2 external Terabyte+ hard-drives; and a few other toys.

I can see this. We picked this printer for the specs - love this 4800 dpi scan. And I needed a fax besides going thru the computer.

I love that double sided printing feature if doing a lot. I have to buy the duplexing tray for this Artisan, and will do that once it looks like there is reason for it. I seem to be living in Epson world here, and it's just the matter of downloading the specific drivers for each of the printers. We also have a specific photo printer - a "piecture Mate" plus. It's really handy, does only 4X6 paper, but you can have it do half-size or passport size photos, and it will run on batteries, stand-along -reading memory cards, or hooked up to the computer. Very good quality on the photos.

I actually tried using Staples ink for black & color on the everyday old printer. Forget it - the ink stopped being usable before getting to the bottom, and the color wasn't as good. So, we suck it up and buy the true Epson print. This one has 6 cartridges, and happily we got an extra hi-capacity of the black as a bonus with the printer.

Nice toys. I'm in desperate need of a new tablet - soon, I think. And, this week's errand - a new USB hub. The machine has a superdrive, which burns whatever, plus we have a couple of external LaCie firewire peripherals (hot swappable), hard drive & CD burner. It's enough - I can back-up on the firewire drive, and this machine has more storage than I need. Next toy - new laptop - but we're waiting a bit.

Ellice

One of the things I found for doing duplex printing, get one that has the separate tray. The build-in versions seem to "dry out" the lubricant in the gears after a time and then seems to slow and drag till cleaned and lubed again.

Had the same trouble with Staples ink, only printer it worked alright in was an old canon from 5-8 years ago but not for fancy printing just the general printing.

I have small Wacom Graphire 4 is thick and very small in the drawing area, don't use it much since I got late last year a larger Genius G-Pen F610. It is nice when using the Windows mouse/pen functions, the outer ring has pre-set functions and programmable places of common Windows or program actions. Mine has drawing area of 6 x 10 inches while there are both larger and smaller versions, with this just place picture under the cover then trace, erase, and colour your work.

Something from the same company I have is the G-Note 7100, it is a full-size notepad that can store all your writings/drawings in all the colours [blue and black included, other colours extra]. Just have to transfer pad pages with usb cable, usage samples are: 1) use pre-printed pages and just fill in blanks;

2) sign-in record sheets; or 3) normal meeting notes but nicely transferrable [even includes general version of program to read writing and converts].

I have gotten HP's for laptops for the last year or so, One was last year at tax time and next was few months before xmas, both 17" screens and dv9900 series. Got both with AMD cpu's, and room for extra hard drives in the computer itself.

Also got one of the HP laptop stands, with built-in speakers and the internal hard drive bay. It is very nice when taking the laptop on trips, just one plug to undo and everything else stays plugged-in on the stand itself. Easier when using the

32" Hi-Def LCD wide-screen m>

Exactly. This has a separate tray - something like a $20-$30 add on.

Good to know I'm not the only one.

Yup, I have one of the Wacom Graphires. Works fine, has about 6 X 9 drawing area. But, I really need something a little bigger. The Genius G-Pen sounds really interesting.

Interesting capabilities. For me, it's about having the pressure sensitive pen/pad and a large enough surface area for putting things into Illustrator. I haven't been seriously shopping for this, as it's a luxury, but expect to get a new pad in the next couple of months. Plenty of graphics peripherals for the machine, so I'm hoping to try some, and keep up with the reviews.

ellice

*snipped original post for brevity*

Sounds nice. I know that we're getting one of the MacBooks - probably a 15" screen. The newest version is very slim, long battery life, and quite light. DH doesn't really want to cart around the 17", and I have a Cinema type Mac display in the office with the dual processor tower. In his "office/guest-room" we have another 20" display - which I may swap for a newer one - but that will give him plenty. Plus we're all networked, and it's easy enough for him to come in here and use this big display. Reasoning for this display - graphics work - gives plenty of layout room, with all the Illustrator tool pads accessible & great color matching. But, hey, we still have HP calculators...

Ellice

Like that price better, than repair price after. Just like a mechanic pricing, $40-65 base level and then more after. Parts extra....lol

Getting bored with ones I have, I'm looking at getting at least a 17" screen but would prefer a 20" screen. When I get my cheque this month I might get a new one, and give away one of the 17" laptops like I did for the last three I changed [niece's dad had her pay me $100 for one gotten from me, but I added extras that were sitting in boxes wasting away....lol] I have been looking at permanently using the 32" hi-def lcd monitor.

You have the Wacom bigger than mine. The stores didn't carry them and/or they were very pricey around here for some reason. Yet the next city up have things cheaper for some reason even thou both are actual cities with same item.

Both of the Genius can be set the have the pens bleed on screen and also set the pressure for the brush type pointers sensitivity for the different pen types.

I haven't had time to check out the Windows 7 yet to see if I want that. Can do like laptop for 2 years ago, get the XP OS installed and install new OS when I have used it on another laptop first.

House is getting updated and repairs done as ordered by federal government programs here, moving living room to bigger location of 2 spare old bedrooms, and enlarging dining room using part of old living room and rest goes to kitchen. Over $30, 000 [mine and government] for changes goes out very fast, and some places look like very little done but boy did it add up.

I want to set the voice commands and controls. Just the time to train it is the only pain I have ever found with them. I want to get the Blu-ray burner to work with the laptops, have one but not in the laptop and I don't have tower to just put the unit into. It was easier to set up a LAN in parents' house

20-25 years ago using 7 to 18 towers while doing classes...lol

I'm getting all of these new things soon since cancer center wants me to decide for treatments if available and see how long, or just drive over to get pain killers every few weeks. So I have to decide, I want best so I can not waste time with repairs and things. I don't have time to waste on that.