HP has guaranteed that all those people affected, and many others who hear about this, will never buy an HP inkjet printer again.
That Epson EcoTank line looks better every day.
Posts by Tom Betz
18 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2008
HP Ink COO: Sorry not sorry we bricked your otherwise totally fine printer cartridges
Google tries to run from flailing robotics arm
Friday 18th March 2016 23:43 GMT
Has everyone forgotten?
From this December 17, 2013 NY Times story:
Google executives said the company would honor existing military contracts, but that it did not plan to move toward becoming a military contractor on its own.
Did Google X's attitude toward DARPA contracts change after Andy Rubin left?
Everything bad in the world can be traced to crap Wi-Fi
Friday 4th March 2016 15:05 GMT
What person who has a good 4G service available on their device travels with WiFi enabled? That way lies madness.
Especially now that I'm using it on a Nexus 6P (which performs soooo much better than my former Verizon-branded Moto-X), I will cling to my unlimited Verizon data service until my dying day; and the only places it uses WiFi are known secure connections, like the one I have at home.
Bite my shiny metal Ask: Java for OS X crapware storm brewing
IBM jobs axe: 'The cuts have STARTED and are spreading' sigh staff
Wednesday 28th January 2015 21:56 GMT
"that Forbes made up?"
Bob Cringley has really good inside contacts at Big Blue. If he said 100,000 (which he didn't, IBM's PR staff made that number up in their response to his first Forbes column on the subject), I'd believe him. Check out his follow-up to the Forbes story on his own blog
So far, he's on the mark:
"So what’s the truth about these job cuts? Well we’ll know this week because I hear the notices are already in transit to be delivered on Wednesday. (I originally wrote in the mail but then realized IBM would condemn me if they are coming by FedEx, instead.)"
My emphasis above.
The new Falcon Heavy: MOST POWERFUL ROCKET since the Apollo moonshots
Windows tablet price war FINALLY has 'em prying open wallets
Wednesday 28th January 2015 18:10 GMT
A bargain way into Win 10 indeed!
Over the weekend I finally installed the Technical Preview on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. I hadn't used it much, found using Win 8.1 to be frustrating.
Even in its very unfinished state (and build 9962 does have a lot of rough edges ), using Windows 10 in tablet mode is a considerable improvement over 8.1 on a tablet. For example, I'm finally able to use Chrome as my default browser, as long as I'm careful not to overload the meager 2GB of RAM on my tablet.
I really look forward to seeing the features demoed last week show up on my tablet.
One Sync to rule them all: How Microsoft plans to fix OneDrive
Friday 9th January 2015 15:36 GMT
If this means One Drive for Business....
... will finally allow me to locate my sync folder outside my profile (finally making it compatible with roaming profiles) as my personal One Drive does now, it will finally make it usable in my organization.
Now, if it allows me to locate my sync folder on a network share, it will be perfect.
That dreaded syncing feeling: Will Microsoft EVER fix OneDrive?
Tuesday 18th November 2014 17:00 GMT
The signal flaw in OneDrive/OneDrive for Business
There is one flaw in both versions of OneDrive that is so egregious that it makes all the others look piddly.
Unlike Box, DropBox and Google Drive, one is not permitted to reconfigure where the locally synced copy of OneDrive resides; it must reside inside the user's Windows Profile.
That makes both versions of OneDrive sync incompatible with a key feature of Windows for corporate users, roaming profiles. You think it might slow adoption somewhat?
Stupid. Simply stupid.
Microsoft snorefest: For crying out loud, Nadella – just channel Ballmer!
Wednesday 12th November 2014 17:03 GMT
Re: Blue Sky thinking
Blue Sky thinking is great when the nuts and bolts work correctly.
For example, one of the more attractive elements of Office 365 is the for-all-intents-and-purposes unlimited synced cloud storage that is One Drive for Business. However, from a corporate standpoint, it is also one of the most annoying elements, as the location of the local store can't be relocated from the user profile; hence One Drive for Business (and not for Business, for that matter) is incompatible with another feature of Windows important to the corporate world, roaming profiles.
This while Box and Dropbox and Google Drive are all happy to permit you to put your local store practically anywhere, even on mapped shares! So these products are more compatible with Windows than Microsoft's own product is.
And I don't see Nadella whipping his teams to correct this ridiculous oversight any time soon.
The Flash lives up to its name with a fast-paced pilot full of potential
Saturday 25th October 2014 14:28 GMT
We're several episodes on here in the states...
And so far, Iris hasn't succumbed to your fears. All in all, the series remains crackling.
However, I suspect that I now know who really killed Barry's mother, but mum's the word for now.
You didn't mention, though, the lovely casting choice CW producers made for Barry's unjustly-imprisoned father: John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry Allen in the 1990 CBS TV series. A thoughtful touch.
As bankruptcy looms for RadioShack, we ask its chief financial officer... oh. He's quit
Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro
Thursday 10th July 2014 16:14 GMT
Re: "If you want to listen to great-sounding music"
That's so true. This was really brought home to me recently when I heard a local orchestra play Ligeti's Concert Românesc. No recording I can find of it does justice to the rich harmonic content of the fourth movement. There is so much music, especially in the modern classical idiom, for which this is the case.
Thursday 10th July 2014 16:14 GMT
Re: They want how much?
Multi-room can be pretty cheap, at least in most of the US. Don't know how UK law would treat this solution.
$80 to connect a decent low-power FM transmitter like the FS CZH-05B tuned to a locally-unused frequency to a PC (I dedicate an old refurb PC that uses my living-room TV as a monitor), and whatever you want to spend for whatever FM receiver you want for every room you want to cover. With a couple of remote-control apps on my smartphone I can control the PC from anywhere in the house.
I've got an inexpensive stereo receiver and some 70's vintage Marantz speakers in the bedroom, a couple of Sangean WR-11 radios (again, $80 a pop) in smaller rooms where I care about the audio quality and some 70's vintage garage sale radios where I don't particularly. Works great. I added a cheap Sony Bluetooth receiver (from the Bluetooth Headset SBH20B kit) to the PC so I can stream from my smartphone if I want to. Not what you'd want to use for critical listening (I have that kit in the living room, and it can play a different source from the PC or the same source, as I choose, so I have essentially a two-zone system), but for MP3s and streaming audio apps, what more do you need?
Salesforce CEO Benioff offers Obama 'free' Healthcare.gov web fix
Friday 6th December 2013 21:21 GMT
Yeah, there's a solution
Salesforce? The people who can't configure the e-mail component of their software to provide an RFC-compliant Envelope-Sender , which results in their customers' e-mails being rejected as spam on a regular basis?
Yeah, that's who you want building your misson-critical web sites.
Staying power: The small screen spans of the eleven Doctor Whos
OOo's put the willies up Microsoft
Friday 15th October 2010 12:12 GMT
32-bit Office 2010 is required...
... if you are using Sharepoint 2010. 64-Bit Office is incompatible.
I've been testing Office 2010, and am about to dump it. Bring in an Excel 2003 spreadsheet and apply Strikethrough to a field, and the field's formatting is hosed -- the text falls below the cell! Nothing you do after that brings it back (though I haven't tried loading the sheet into OOo yet, saving it as OOo, and then saving it again as Excel -- that has fixed problems introduced by Excel 2003 in the past.)
Mozilla CEO blasts Apple for putting security of the internet at risk
Tuesday 25th March 2008 00:55 GMT 
So uninstall Apple Software Updates!
I noticed a long time ago that every time I installed Quicktime or iTunes that Apple Software Updates ws installed, even when I unchecked the option box during installation.... but it's right there in the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel, and it uninstalls easily and quickly!
My PC remains safe and secure -- and it doesn't break a thing. In fact, it fixed an iTunes bug I ran into once!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
