Friday, December 1, 2006
Ironically, just as we received our new Brother MFC-845cw printer (all-in-one), we've been finding that we really aren't happy with the Brother HL-5250DN that we bought about a month ago. It's a really great printer in speed, ink crispness, setup instructions, and networking but it also has this awful page curl problem. We thought we had fixed it by buying 24-pound paper as suggested by many customers (Brother employees?) on Amazon, but after Patrick printed new copies of a chapter he's sending out—using 24-lb paper—and seeing it curl frownworthily, I'm ready to just get rid of it at any cost. 24-pound paper does not fix the page curl problem! At least I didn't buy any toner for it yet. Patrick didn't understand why the paper curls, so I explained that the platen is heated, and it acts just like a curling iron. However, I don't know why this design is the only laserprinter I've ever seen that makes pages curl like this. Patrick found that if he takes a foot-tall stack of cookbooks and puts them on top of his printouts just after they come out of the printer, then 3 hours later they are almost straight again. I suggested he could speed up the process by using our clothes iron and our wooden cutting board, but he'd have to be careful to not burn the paper or the cutting board. Alternately, for a few minutes, I considered how well two letter-sized, superheated, heavyweight pizza stones might work, but you know the risk of fire from that is absurdly great, and one shouldn't have to go to that much trouble even if it did work. The Brother HL-5250DN was my second choice of black-and-white laser printer after the HP LaserJet 1320 which also was a bust (see September 13, 2006). I don't know what I'll do now except go back to the grid and see what else I can pull out. I forgot to mention previously that, to HP's credit, some manager-sounding person (who happened to have an Asian Indian accent—hmmmm?) called me back, albeit weeks after I returned the printer, trying to follow up on my problem report and (probably) my claim that Best Buy sold me a used printer as new. I never bothered to return his call—there was no point since I no longer had the printer, and I was still upset with them anyhow. He left a message only once, and I never heard from him again. This told me that HP is trying—they're really trying—and that counts for at least an honorable mention in my book. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Installed the Envivio plug-in at the IRC for Monday's video showing. Had to check with Rodney because the sound wasn't hooked up properly. He found someone had put the wires back in wrong on the back of the computer. Welcome party for Alyssa. Cindy brought bagels, cream cheese, and Odwalla. Poster work for Susie/Marilyn/Helene. Add-ons updates for Firefox for all staff. Lunch: minestrone soup, crackers, garlic bread. Took inventory and prioritized the purchase of new computer hardware for our office. Still need to gather some RAM and graphics card data, but have it mostly figured out. I'm guessing the Mac Mini will be revved sometime early in 2007—I'm guessing February or March—and we'll make our first batch of purchases after Leopard is released. Dinner at home with Patrick: vegetarian quesadilla, rosemary chicken boob with wild rice. My Streamlight Trident Headlamp from Cyberguys arrived, and I'm very happy with it with one exception, which I'll mention first—it comes in a blister pack. The Trident Headlamp by Streamlight provides forehead-mounted light using a combination of 3 LEDs and one Xenon bulb using three AAA batteries. It's water resistant and has a limited lifetime warranty. The one I purchased is black and safety yellow. The elastic headband is black and red-orange. Within minutes of removing it from its awful, plastic clamshell, heat-sealed bordered packaging, I learned how the lamp head moves up and down. The clicks it makes are rather loud/noisy, but the feel of it is good. I really like the rubber feel of the black part of the lamp head. I loaded the batteries—the battery compartment door is a little hard to open because it's small and not rubber like the head, but it works. Both compartments that open include rubber o-ring seals, and the seals are tight and fit well. The headlamp seems to be pretty water resistant, and I would feel confident using it in wet conditions (e.g., rain) or accidentally dropping it in water. I easily adjusted the elastic headband and put it on. I turned out all the lights and pressed the on switch several times, cycling through the different light options: single LED, three LEDs, Xenon bulb, off. It does not light the LEDs in any combination with the Xenon bulb—this wasn't clear to me before I bought it. The LEDs provide a white-blue light, and the Xenon is white-yellow light. Out of the packaging, the headlamp is fitted with an elastic headband. The package also includes a rubber chin strap, but at first I couldn't tell how you would remove the elastic headband without cutting it. The instructions included don't indicate that where the plastic meets the elastic they've left a small hole so that you can wiggle the elastic out without cutting it. You can't see this hole, however, unless you move the elastic aside. If I hadn't seen that, I might have cut the elastic in order to switch bands. It's a little unbecoming to wear a headlamp, but for the wearer it's completely natural to have light always be where you're looking and to have your hands free at the same time. I recommend this product, but be careful with the clamshell packaging. Streamlight could improve this product by putting it in less dangerous packaging, by improving the instructions to say how to remove the elastic headband, by making the tilting head quieter, and by including rechargeable rather than single-use batteries. (But at least they are genuine Duracells—a trusted brand.)