I work out of my home and find that my Hewlett-Packard DeskJet works like a horse but still doesn't print fast enough for my needs. I've heard that the way to go is a laser printer, which will give me better quality and faster printing. What do you suggest?
They shoot horses, don't they? I say plug that HP workhorse and send it to sleep with the fishes. Since you asked for an opinion, I certainly have one here.
The human race has wasted far too much time waiting for ink jet printers to paint out full-color Web pages and other documents when all anybody really wanted was information, not 256-color artwork.
I long ago learned the joys of plugging a cheap little $300 Xerox laser printer into my PC because it spits out black-and-white hard copies at around 8 pages per minute, making it very easy indeed to capture ink and paper copies of the best stuff I encounter on the Web or create in my own write. (Forgive the malaprop - I couldn't resist.)
Best of all, you can expect a single laser cartridge (they cost on the order of $80) to last at least a year under fairly robust use, and replacing one is far less bother than what's required with color ink jets.
In response to your reader who was looking for a grade-book program that would work with both a PC and an Apple computer: I agree that anyone who uses a computer should learn the merits of a good spreadsheet.
However, making a complete, fully functional grade-book program can become a major task.
Instead, I suggest that the reader go to www.gradebusters.com and find an award-winning grade-book program that will work on both the PC and the Mac.
The program prints out a variety of reports and plots, makes seating charts (in which you can place pictures of the students), allows several different grading schemes and methods.
It can also export the results to a large variety of other software, including Excel.
Many school districts have purchased a group license for all of their teachers, or you can buy an individual lifetime version for around $100.
Since teachers can get a no-cost trial version of Grade Busters by visiting that Web site, I am tickled to pass along your excellent suggestion.
Howsomever, as we used to say back in that little red Wyoming schoolhouse where I got brung up, I still think teachers, of all people, should know their spreadsheetin' right along with their readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic.
Usually, when you receive unsolicited e-mail from a mailing list, there is a message at the bottom saying something like, "To be taken off this list, respond to this message with `unsubscribe' in the subject line."
However, lately I've been getting unsolicited mail with no such option. Also, there is no indication of who it is from - the "from" indicator contains what works out to be an invalid address.
"Block messages from this sender" won't work because the e-mail address it is sent from is not only invalid, but different each time.(It always ends the same, "@acme," but Outlook doesn't have a wildcard option - I can't say "Block all @acme.")
My question is, what can I do to find out who is sending these and get them to stop?
Also, are there any laws about this sort of thing? I know that the Internet is new and the law has been slow to catch up. Is there any bureau I can complain to?
Those blind spam messages are the bane of most of us with e-mail accounts.
They are best dealt with by simply deleting them unread when you recognize them.
For a comprehensive look at ways to complain about spam, check out the www.junkbusters.com Web site that shows how to seek out the Internet service provider being used by the spammers and how to pressure that ISP to shut down the spam mill in question.
In your case, there is a command in Outlook Express that lets you automatically delete all messages with keywords in the text, such as that "@acme."
Just click on the New Message Rule option in the Message box, and you will be given a list of conditions including "Where the message body contains specific words."
Check that and then choose Delete from the Action box and type in the keyword, and "@acme" will sleep with the fishes.
Send e-mail to jocates@tribune.com
