Hi. I'd like to relate my experience just this past weekend regarding these two topics.
Last Christmas I gave my 79 year old dad his first computer--an S900 with OS 9.0 on it. He's been slow to come around to the age of home computing. Anyway, I finally got him to purchase a printer. I saw a Sunday circular Office Depot ad with a Lexmark Z45 at $70 after a $20 mail-in rebate. I recommended he buy it as I have recently bought a Lexmark Z23 from our local K-Mart Super Center for $50 and was surprised by what a good job such an inexpensive printer can do. A Lexmark Z43 printer was listed on DealMac for $55 but shipping was $17. Total: $72. No rebate to wait on but the a week to ten day wait for shipping. lessons learned: buying a cheap printer is like buying tires... no matter what the advertised price, you always spend considerably more. The Z23 seemed like a good deal since it included a free pack of Kodak glossy paper with it (about a $10 value). What I did not know is that the Z23 only came a color cartridge and a black cartridge cost me another $32. Nor did it include a cable...$20 more. So my $50 printer cost me, with tax, about $110. The Z45 on the other hand had both cartridges in the box and quite a bit better dpi resolution and is about a page per minute faster. You'd still have to buy the cable but dad got a better printer, larger (and, it turns out, cheaper) ink cartridges included for less money than what my bottom end machine total cost amounted to. Lesson 2. I already knew you need a USB/PCI card to run today's printers and scanners, etc. When shipping was included, however, the best deal I found on the Internet was equal to the best deal I found at a local Staples store. Lesson 3: I also knew you needed Apple's "USB Support" extension for the computer to "see" the card and thus whatever is connected to it. So I, having OS 9.1, copied my "USB Support 1.4.6" onto a floppy, drove to his house and loaded it on, put in the USB card, fired everything up... no printer :-| Shut down, press cuda, zap PRAM, rebuild desktop... no printer :-( Do it all again, check and recheck cables... still no printer >:( Looking at extension manager, I see the extension and that it is on. What is the deal? It's a Mac, it should have been ready to go in 5 minutes. Grumble. Then I notice in extension manager "9.0" listed next to all his extensions except the one I just loaded which has "9.1" beside it. It occurs to me, maybe this extension is "too new". So I go back home, load USP Support 1.4.1 on a floppy, drive back to dad's, stick it in the extension folder, put 1.4.6 into a disabled folder and SHAZAM! Printing like crazy now... whoo hoo! So to recap: 1) Many of today's cheap printers give surprisingly good quality. But looking for a deal on a little better model (even just one or two steps up) is worth it. 2) I have found plenty of bargains on line. But there are often good deals locally too. 3) Make sure you have the USB Support extension that is appropriate for your OS. I assumed that the most recent one would be the best. Not always so. One last thing: before I wrote this I searched for USB Support 1.4.6 on Apple's site and it is NOT there! 1.4.4 is but not 1.4.6. It appears that 1.4.6 is in the 9.1 updater file only. No clue why, it just is. Dave Stephens __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
