Things that drive you nuts about sharing a computer

Reading an active thread about printers and how they eat ink made me think about this.

My wife and I share this machine. I am responsible for keeping it alive and equipped with all consumables. She didn't start using a computer until about a year ago and is now an avid e-bay'er and researcher.

She drives me crazy with the amount of, (IMO) worthless stuff she prints. If she sees an article she likes, PRINT. She sees an interesting item on ebay, PRINT. It's probably not even an item she has any intent to buy but she prints it nonetheless.. A pair of shoes, a dress, a belt it really doesn't matter as long as it's printable. If it will use lots of ink she prints it.

I have discussed this many times with her but she keeps doing it. I finally made her go out and buy the $25-$30 per ink cartridge hoping that would slow here down but NO. What dies she come back and say, "Boy these things (ink cartridges) sure last a long time." I am replacing cartridges about once a month and that's no exaggeration.

The other thing she does is call me when she's having trouble printing. I refer to that as rubbing salt in my wounds. She a great gal and has a laptop she just HAD TO HAVE. It rarely gets turned on because using my machine is so much easier.

Before my wife decided she was ready for the internet I replaced ink cartridges about every 6-8 months, now it's every month. Nothing's going to change so I might as well rant here and keep buying ink.

So...What part of sharing a machine drives you nuts or is it just me?

I don't know if you know this, but when you print something, you can click on Preferences, and chose Quickprint. You can chose to print all color images in black. Quickprint uses only a fraction of the ink used for "regular" print quality. I once printed 118 pages of that Joke thread here on CPF and it barely even made a dent in my printer cartrige! Unfortunately, I didn't expand my window to full size before I printed, and it cut off about 1 inch of the right side of the page, so most of the jokes were missing a bunch of words.

Until my wife discovered a mailing list for crafts, our ink jet printer never worked.


Our work-horse is a laser printer, and has been since I found one on sale in 1991. That means the Ink jet is almost never used. For about 8 years, the inkjet would be clogged or the inks dried out when we tried to use it for a christmas letter.

Now she prints out 1 to 20 sheets a day of various craft projects. The inkjet is properly exercised.

On the few occasions when I want to print something in color, it works dependably.


I maintain servers for a living. If it's not being shared, it just aint right.

Daniel

We have 6 computers, and 4 people. I don't know how to share.

Dave, you can get a decent monochrome laser for ~$100 now days. Toner is cheap. Then you can get refill toner on ebay -- making toner CHEAP. Sounds like, at your house, it would pay itself off in about 2 months.

Learn to type in Dvorak?

Whenever my wife or my son use my computer, it seems I have to go to various lengths to remove spyware.

Jeff

I changed the pref. to draft and monocrome soon after all this started. That lasted a week.

The laser idea makes the most sense for me. I had a big old laser that was washed away last year. Maybe it's time to take a look at getting another one.

People installing IMO worthless software on my machine drives me nuts. That's a big reason I rarely let anyone use my machine, and watch them like a hawk when they do. One time my niece was coming over for a visit and she brought over some silly kid's game to show my mom. Knowing what some games can do to a machine when you install them I told her no way was she installing anything on my machine, especially something just for the purpose of using for one time. Instead, I started up one of the older machines that I keep spare for just such a purpose and let her use it. Another time she wanted to go on the Internet using my machine and had brought a complimentary AOL disk to install on my machine for just that purpose (I don't know what was wrong with going online with my machine as it was but she had said something like the chat rooms didn't work). Anyway, since AOL is just about number one on the list of things that screw up your computer, I told her forget it. Just do without the chat rooms and other worthless crap AOL offers. And of course anytime she uses my machine to surf she complains it doesn't work right because it asks to install Macromedia Flash. This is because she goes to sites which have Flash animations and I have Flash unistalled as a matter of course (I never saw a more pointless, worthless piece of software like Flash).

On the printing thing, I don't get why people have to print every single thing they think is interesting or "cute" which the find online. A big point to having a computer is to save paper by using it as an electronic scratchpad, not generate tons of worthless garbage. My sister's inlaws have 3 kids and go through at least one ink cartridge and a few packs of paper a week. They also spend something like $30 on batteries every single week for the kids' toys and things like their digicam. I've tried without success to get them to go to rechargeables, but apparently it's too much trouble for them to pop some batteries in a charger once in a while. Amazing to me how much resources "average" people waste now. For those stuck with perpetually buying new ink cartridges you might want to try the refill kits offered on eBay. I get mine from King Kahler Bargains. I bought a kit which contained a pint of each color for $50 and another which contained a pint of black for about $20. Each is good for dozens of refills. Even though I go through the equivalent of an ink cartridge only every few months, there is no way I'm paying $30 a pop for a new one. That's just wasting money. Needless to say my sister's inlaws aren't interested in that, either, and they think it's "cute" when the kids are constantly printing stuff. When their printer goes I'll wholehearted recommend a color laser for them. Those have come down enough in price that average people can afford them. The first time they get sticker shock from the cost of toner cartridges they might finally make a bit of an effort to get their kids to cut down on the printing. Is it really necessary to print out all your chat room conversations, among other things?

I don't really like when my manly favorites list suddenly has a link to a recipe page inserted somewhere in the middle, but the good part is that it usually means some good grub is just around the corner..
My kids will sometimes get into my palm software, I get to work and my 10am appointment is "jhefduibiundkfdngrejbgfx" their spelling is really terrible, but it always translates the same.. They just wanted to say hello.

DieselDave,
Install a wireless network card on her laptop, and teach her how to just turn it off in hypernation or standby mode. That way it's very fast to turn it on, and she won't bother booting yours (I think). You could even share the printer on your pc via the network, but then she has to go through the trouble of starting your pc to access the printer, when she finds something that 'needs' printing.

jtr1962,
You and I look at these matters in exactly the same way

Jan

That my wife hogs my most valuable computer of 5 machines.

I've got 2 laptops. One's a decked-out Dell D800, the other a decked-out Mac Powerbook that I use nearly 100% of the time and for work so it holds my mail, calendar, client files, etc.

Both have great screens, loads of speed/RAM, and work pretty flawlessly.

My wife doesn't like the Dell, so I end up sitting there surfing and checking webmails with the Dell all through the Tivo's of One Life To Live (super blech!) and Lost (blech!) just vegging on the couch while I wait for my chance to use the Mac & check my business mail, calendar, and drawing up proposals. At least I have CPF to save me from the Terrible TV!

I"ll be the third to recommend a cheap laser. I've got an HP something or other, very inexpensive. Uses 300 watts while printing and 30 seconds after the last page it throttles back to only 4 watts for standby. I've had it for a year and it's actually still on the first cartridge... but you'll probably use it up faster

You can have both the laser and the ink jet attached at the same time so that you only use the color one when you need color. It really has saved me a lot of cartridge money lately.

Add my vote for the laser. Best thing I ever did for myself as printers go. When I need all the power of the wide-carriage A3+ Canon iP9950 with its 8 ink cartridges to print my creations for framing, I get the job outsourced

Xerox Phaser 3116 - tiny little thing, handles my toughest jobs - I throw forms and laser labels at it all the time, it delivers. Laser labels nearly killed my HP LaserJet4+. Anybody who's ever received a package from me with the neatly lasered addresses will be seeing this printer's work. Highly recommended!

As for computers.. *PERSONAL* computer. Not meant for sharing. I absolutely can't imagine that, I'll scrape together a machine from spare parts and use it for myself rather than share. Who knows what spyware, adware, keystroke loggers and whatnot they have installed. I've had my own machine for more than ten years and that IS NOT going to change as long as I can build, beg, borrow, steal, salvage, or get hold of them.

They use IE when they web surf!

I use Mozilla, and won't click a LOT of links etc.

Reminds me I've gotta use PCPitstop again!

Yeah, this sucks, especially when dealing with no-technology people who have an aversion to reading something online and not killing trees.

Think laser printer - used NEC Superscript/Brother office monochrome laser - $150
a 6000 sheet toner cartridge - $60
refilled by toner refills on eBay - $30.
cheap 700 sheet reams of paper from Sams Club - $4.75
print setting set to "low quality", "draft", or "less ink" mode

That should put you in the $0.02-0.035/page range, which is not too bad.

If you have multiple PCs, I have to recomend the Brother HL1270N. It's been fairly bullet proof even though we have multiple cats (printers hate cat hair). 12 pages per minute.

The N means it has an ethernet connection so everyone can share it. USB and Parallel too. That particular model understands Postscript as well as HPCL, so you can print to it from a mac, linux or windows box.

We bought ours new at Office Depot for under $200. I'm sure it was a mistake. The HL-2070N is the replacement (no post script). 20 pages per minute. $174 at www.bothermall.com ! Wow!

people changing MY desktop settings

Doesn't windows have the idea of multiple users? Or can't you do that with the personal version or something? cause when I had visitors who needed to check their email and web surf and such, i just created them a new user account on the mac. They logged in to the default applications and they could enter their own setup or download whatever else they needed. Meanwhile when I was working I just logged them out and me in, no difference from where I left it.

Then when my sister left I just deleted her account and it was like it never happened.

Much easier than trying to teach someone what not to mess with on your settings.

DieselDave said:

Reading an active thread about printers and how they eat ink made me think about this.

My wife and I share this machine. I am responsible for keeping it alive and equipped with all consumables. She didn't start using a computer until about a year ago and is now an avid e-bay'er and researcher.

She drives me crazy with the amount of, (IMO) worthless stuff she prints. If she sees an article she likes, PRINT. She sees an interesting item on ebay, PRINT. It's probably not even an item she has any intent to buy but she prints it nonetheless.. A pair of shoes, a dress, a belt it really doesn't matter as long as it's printable. If it will use lots of ink she prints it.

I have discussed this many times with her but she keeps doing it. I finally made her go out and buy the $25-$30 per ink cartridge hoping that would slow here down but NO. What dies she come back and say, "Boy these things (ink cartridges) sure last a long time." I am replacing cartridges about once a month and that's no exaggeration.

The other thing she does is call me when she's having trouble printing. I refer to that as rubbing salt in my wounds. She a great gal and has a laptop she just HAD TO HAVE. It rarely gets turned on because using my machine is so much easier.

Before my wife decided she was ready for the internet I replaced ink cartridges about every 6-8 months, now it's every month. Nothing's going to change so I might as well rant here and keep buying ink.

So...What part of sharing a machine drives you nuts or is it just me?

Click to expand...

What Saaby said,
Buy an older laserjet and let her print for days. :naughty:

Not that you need any more affirmations for laser printers but yes I do the same. Even with most web pages, I don't need color so use laser. I saw a color laser printer at Sam's club for like $300? or thereabouts. I wonder if color toners that go along with color lasers are much cheaper then inkjets. I use a color laser at work a lot. It is great at web pages and casual photographs but inkjets will still beat it for detailed photos.