TO REFILL OR NOT

Often while talking to customers or responding to readers I am in a dilemma whether to suggest a refill or a new printer cartridge. Well, this week I will list the options and tell you how to go refill safely. But please note, these are my comments and parts of this article have been sourced from leading manufacturers of printers.

Life was simple in the days of the dot-matrix printer. The dots were printed like a typewriter using a similar ribbon. You could go to any third-party manufacturer and they would change the ribbon inside your cartridge for a tenth of the cost of a new one. Then came along laser and inkjet printers which sucked the ink out, along with a lot of money from our wallets. This was when the trouble started.

Most of us have some time or the other fallen prey to refilling gangs who charge anywhere between Rs 50 and Rs 800, depending on the cartridge, but leave us with spoilt printers that no one would repair. Service centres would tell you your printer was dead because you used refilled cartridges and that the repair could not be covered under warranty.

As my friend and business acquaintance who runs a chain of cartridge refill and remanufacturing franchises across the country advises, the chemistry of inks is very different. The same ink can’t work for 600 dpi and 1200 dpi printers. Similarly, between two models of colour laser printers from the same manufacturer, the inks would differ. But the refill guys just use the same set of inks—a concoction of chemical, colour, and water—to fill your cartridges. These would eventually leak and kill the printer.

So, the next time you buy a printer, I suggest you check the manufacturer website, and not the dealer about warranty information. I found this following quote on the HP website: “For HP printer products, the use of a non-HP ink cartridge or a refilled ink cartridge does not affect either the warranty to the customer or any HP support contract with the customer. However, if printer failure or damage is attributable to the use of a non-HP or refilled ink cartridge, HP will charge its standard time and materials charges to service the printer for the particular failure or damage.”
This is what the FAQ section of the Epson website says: “Epson does not recommend refilling or using third-party ink cartridges. If these third party products cause a failure, the repair of that failure will not be covered under warranty.”

There wasn’t much on the Canon or Samsung websites, but industry sources say no printer manufacturer (though their service centres might) would refuse to service a printer just because you have used a third party cartridge.

Though one has to be fully aware of the bad practices in the industry, the market is gradually getting structured. Leading players like Cartridge World, Laser Tech and others are making it a better market. Some remanufactured and compatible cartridge suppliers like Inktec sell compatible cartridges for roughly half the price of the original cartridge and run the same length without damaging your printer.

On the other hand the large printer manufacturers are trying to keep you away from refilled cartridges by putting in chips that count the number of prints. These have a flipside though. Your cartridge designed for 2,000 prints would stop printing if you have printed as many pages, though covering just 2 per cent of the paper and even with ink still left inside the cartridge. Cartridge World and Laser Tech have started offering chip resets, but not for all cartridges.

Cartridge refilling, if done carefully and through proper channels, is a benefit to the environment. If you want to go for a replacement, just make sure your empty cartridge does not land in the hands of refillers.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, dated Sunday September 28, 2008

Messenger on the Move

Here is how to stay connected with Internet contacts through your GPRS phone
I recall when I got myself a BlackBerry about three years back. I kept thinking of a way to chat with my teams using the phone. Time went by and in came Google Talk. There were other third party utilities which could do the same, but all of them wanted money.

There wasn’t much you could do if you were on a general GPRS phone and still wanted to use all your messengers. Well, finally, I have the answer for you and it is called Nimbuzz. But only if you are on a Symbian Series 60 phone—not iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile.
So, what is so special about Nimbuzz? After all, there are other players like IM+, Agile Messenger, E-buddy, and Fring which offer similar services. But I liked the Nimbuzz, and this is why.

I use ICQ, AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Skype and Facebook, as well as an internal chat messenger that runs on a protocol called Jabber for our corporate team. At times I carry my Skype phone with me so that I can make cheap International calls—with tarrifs falling, we may not have to do that much longer. But carrying so many phones can be tough and I have always wanted to move Skype to one of my phones, so that I could skip to Skype when I wanted and stick to GSM during the rest of the time.

Facebook chat, too, is becoming more of a necessity, as most of my school/college friends don’t use messengers. Moreover, I did not want to load too many applications on the phone and wanted to stick to a single application — on my computer I use Trillian for Windows, Pidgin for Linux and Adium on Mac to give me one list of all my contacts, irrespective of the messenger.

And this is exactly what Nimbuzz does for your phone, and that too for free. Nimbuzz even has a client for the PC, so your experience on Windows is no different than the one on your cellphone.
So, is it all good? Well, not really. The Edge/GPRS services in India are far below quality and they need to be improved drastically. At times my messenger conversations went missing, and at times I could not make Skype calls because of the poor GPRS/EDGE service. On the upside,...3G will soon be available in the country. And if your phone has Wi-Fi, you can use Nimbuzz to chat or make Skype calls over the wireless network.

There is some serious competition too. Ebuddy, which offers MySpace, Google, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL and MSN, though without Skype, is also free and hence the nearest competitor to Nimbuzz. IM+ offers all that Nimbuzz has to offer, minus MySpace and facebook, but only if you pay $29.95. Fring offers Skype, MSN, Google, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL and SIP (another VoIP Provider), but no Facebook and MySpace. But Fring is still in Beta, and we should see other things added to it.

For now, Nimbuzz is the best way to stay connected while on the move. Download Nimbuzz from nimbuzz.com, and as they claim, join mobile freedom.
To know if your phone is compatible see tinyurl.com/tech2-nimbuzz

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The article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday 21st September 2008.

Two days with the iPhone

It’s a great phone, but with many flaws, so if you want to own one wait for a better price and 3G
The iPhone is finally here, and it is not making waves except in Page 3 circles. I know you want the phone, I want it too, but is it worth the money you have to dish out— as a friend used to say, “now we need to take housing loans to buy gadgets”. Anyway, I got a chance to live with the Jesus phone for two days, and this is what I felt.
Though I have never seen a better phone for business use, it has a whole lot of shortcomings. But still, if I were to buy a phone, it would be an iPhone, but only if the price was right.

The biggest complaint would be that the battery dies out too quickly. Though I was not using Wi-Fi or 3G, or any of the connectivity features, I had to recharge the phone and pray it would last. Since the phone was on loan, I did not have the car recharge kit. I could always recharge it using the USB port on a laptop, but the other end of the phone requires a proprietory connector—why can’t all companies stick to USBs so that it can be recharged anywhere? The phone has a string of features like Bluetooth, Automatic Screen Brightness, Edge, 3G and Wi-Fi; to make sure you get good battery life, turn these off, but then that would make it just another phone.

I did not try out Edge, as I think no one should buy this phone to use it on Edge, it will have to be used as a 3G phone. Luckily both my house and office, and most of the places I work out of—friends’ homes, cafes etc—have wireless. Connecting on Wi-Fi was not bad, though pulling email every time I went into a Wi-Fi zone was rather tiresome. I’d rather stick to a Blackberry for now.

the phone. I also loved the ease with which conference calls can be made. In a usual business day I end up doing about two to three conferences with my team and my customers, and it’s a painful experience with most phones. With the iPhone, all you have to do is press the Add button, call the person, and then press Join. I managed a three-party conference call, even going into private mode with one.

I also managed to crash the phone quite a few times, very unlike other Apple products. I then realised that the phone had over a 100 apps installed in it. Once I removed some of these Apps, the phone was easy to work with. I felt the typing was a bit slow, but then I am used to a regular keypad.

People have complained that it does not have a flash and can’t do picture messaging, but these were not big issues with me. Usually, I do not send MMSes and don’t really know a lot of people who do. The missing flash, though, can be a bit of a problem if you use your phone camera too much.
The interface is brilliantly done. However, getting the search in contacts took some getting used to. But the way the phone asked me each time if I would like to take the call on the speakerphone, the regular iPhone or my bluetooth headset was something I liked. Connecting to the bluetooth headset was also a breeze.

I loved the fact that Apple has given a standard headphone jack on...the phone. I also loved the ease with which conference calls can be made. In a usual business day I end up doing about two to three conferences with my team and my customers, and it’s a painful experience with most phones. With the iPhone, all you have to do is press the Add button, call the person, and then press Join. I managed a three-party conference call, even going into private mode with one.

I also managed to crash the phone quite a few times, very unlike other Apple products. I then realised that the phone had over a 100 apps installed in it. Once I removed some of these Apps, the phone was easy to work with. I felt the typing was a bit slow, but then I am used to a regular keypad.

People have complained that it does not have a flash and can’t do picture messaging, but these were not big issues with me. Usually, I do not send MMSes and don’t really know a lot of people who do. The missing flash, though, can be a bit of a problem if you use your phone camera too much.

Another little problem is that you need a pin which comes with the phone to take the SIM card out. Though no one needs to swap SIMs regularly, if you lose the pin, you are in trouble.

The capability of the iPhone to sync with my Mac or Windows PC is great. The way contacts are stored is also awesome, but sadly I could not search the contacts by first name, maybe I was doing something wrong. The switch to turn the phone from ring mode to vibrate is reminiscent of the Palm. The volume keys felt sturdy, and added to the solid feel Apple has built into the product.

So, do I want one? Yes. Why don’t I have one right now? One the cost is too high, and 3G is still not here. But there is no other phone that offers the same experience, and no one, yes no one, beats the touch interface.

For now, I am going to buy the new iPod Touch, as it can do email on Wi-Fi, along with music, video and even the apps, only the phone is missing.

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The Above Article appeared in the Indian Express, Dated 14th September 2008