Looking for a new printer

I’ve decided we need to get a new printer for home/home office use. The main requirements are for black & white, with some colour printing (but not necessarily photo-quality). We’re happy to continue to get our digital photos processed commercially (eg. when Harvey Norman has a special!)

We’ve previously had a old Canon BJC-2100SP, which was never that impressive. More recently Gary gave me a second-hand HP LaserJet 2100, which does a very nice job except when it jams (which is becoming all too frequent).

One thought was to get two printers – a B&W laser and a cheapish inkjet colour printer, but talking to the guys at work yesterday, Timothy pointed out that if you don’t use the colour regularly then it can dry out. So maybe a colour laser printer might be a good option. The idea of having a network-enabled printer is attractive, though obviously you do pay more for that feature.

Here’s a few of the models I’ve been considering, and a rough calculation of the cost per page for black and white printing.

Maybe the network option isn’t really necessary. Going on the figures above, the Canon 5200 does look like a good compromise between upfront and ongoing consumable costs.

Any other suggestions?

Goodbye Domain Central, Hello GoDaddy

The domain I registered for our band SevenFold is up for renewal in a couple of weeks. I’d received a few reminder emails from Domain Central and as it was getting close I decided today to get around to paying the money.

First stop, I went to their website, but was surprised to see that their online price was now $AU17.95 for .com domains. That’s a fair bit more than the $AU12.50 they’d listed on the tax invoice they mailed me.

Not wanting to pay more than I had to, I then rang them up and tried to pay over the phone. All was fine until they repeated the amount – “Hang on, my bill here says $12.50!”.

“Sorry, our costs have increased so we increased our prices just over a week ago”.

So they refused to let me pay the tax invoice they sent to me, and insisted that it was a “mistake” – even though the invoice wasn’t due until 1st November (and today is the 31st October).

I rang the Office of Consumer and Business Affairs and they confirmed that I should be able to pay the bill I had received for the amounted printed on the bill.

Figuring that I’m not likely to have any more success ringing Domain Central back, I’ve decided instead to take my business elsewhere.

It was 20 years ago today..

That I was in year 12 at Blackwood High School. So last night we had our 20 year reunion at the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel in Lower Mitcham. It was a very warm evening, otherwise I might have worn my old year 12 top (I’ve managed to keep it and it hasn’t faded too much. And yes, it is blue) -

In many ways, 1988 doesn’t seem that long ago, and looking around at the many people who turned up, it was interesting to see some faces that had hardly aged a year, and others I completely did not recognise at all. That’s not completely surprising though – there were originally about 245 of us!

I find it is an occasion to reflect on your life – the choices and decisions you’ve made that have led you to where you are today. Remembering those days leaving High School, wondering how things would turn out. Would I ever have a girlfriend, get married, have kids? “Yes”, “yes” and “yes” in that order as it happens!

It’s interesting that out of all those people, there’s probably only a small handful that I have maintained contact. Having said that, it was really nice to catch up with a few old faces that I wouldn’t have seen since school days.

Thanks to Anita, Kendall and Louise for organising the event.

And if that’s got you in an 80’s reminiscing mood, why not listen to a bit of SKY.fm’s Best of the 80s streaming radio.. ah so many memories, so little time :-)