bruceb news

Previously: HP OfficeJet 8600 Plus

Here’s a reminder to always do a custom install with any program, and watch carefully for unwanted software that may be installed alongside the program you want.

HP has a long history of slow installation routines that sneak unwanted advertising and programs onto your computer. The installation program for the HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus is slightly better than the OfficeJet 8500, but there are still too many chances to wind up assaulted with ads and unwanted bloat.

The opening setup screen presents five pieces of “recommended software.” Only if you read the first sentence carefully does it become clear that none of them are required to use the printer. […] continued

After some research, I settled on HP’s new OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus to replace an aging inkjet printer and defunct flatbed scanner. My early impressions are good. Here are some of the reasons it’s a good fit for me (and might or might not be good for you).

The fundamentals are all there, better than previous generations. In fact, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus looks a lot like HP is making a serious effort to respond to people’s complaints and come up with something new and satisfying.

Printing is surprisingly fast – pages spit out more like what you’d expect from a laser printer than an inkjet. […] continued

External USB hard drives are everywhere. All of you have one or two set up for backups of each computer, right? Many of you also use them for saving video and photo collections that are too big for the hard drive in your computer.

(If you’re shopping, you’ll find that hard drive prices are skyrocketing, almost double what they were a few months ago. Flooding took out factories in Thailand, causing product shortages and price increases. It will be like that for a few more months.)

Most external hard drives are built the same way: a completely normal, plain vanilla hard drive inside a plastic case. […] continued

Western Digital is shipping the first device available in the US with Microsoft’s small business storage and backup software, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.

Microsoft has a gift for names, doesn’t it? It’s a little embarrassing to gush over a product that is brand new on the market and very appealing when it has a wince-inducing name like “Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.” It is closely related to Microsoft’s other new small business server, the one named “Small Business Server 2011 Essentials.” Couldn’t this have been named “Storage Server 2011 Essentials”? That’s a nice name. Maybe it was taken. […] continued

Previously:
Speech Recognition And Dragon NaturallySpeaking

For two weeks I’ve been writing e-mails and articles by speaking out loud into a microphone, using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5. Its accuracy has been uncanny. It is so significantly improved from anything I’ve ever tried before that it feels as if some large technological leap has been made.

if you’ve ever used a voice recognition program, almost everything about the current version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking will be familiar. It’s second nature for me to sit with a microphone and speak out loud:

“This sentence is about cap windows and cap office on thursday period.”

The result is:

This sentence is about Windows and Office on Thursday.

[…] continued

Attentive readers will recall that a new platform for thin and light notebooks was announced by Intel a couple of months ago. The first Ultrabook notebooks are hitting the market in November. I haven’t seen these in person but they strike me as being good representatives of what everyone should be looking for in a notebook these days.

The Asus ZenBook UX31 is now available and getting rave reviews for its solid construction and stunning performance, at a starting price of $1,099. It’s a 13.3” notebook built on Intel’s new Ultrabook chipset, vanishingly thin and weighing less than three pounds. […] continued

Recently I set up a Cisco RV220W wireless router, and a Cisco WAP4410N wireless access point. They are part of Cisco’s small business line and cost roughly twice as much as comparable consumer products – roughly $260 for the router, for example.

The wireless range extended far beyond my expectations. There are so many variables that it’s pointless to list a random number of feet. Let’s just say that I had a strong signal through many intervening walls far beyond anything I would have guessed from my previous wireless experiences.

As you upgrade your equipment, you are more likely to be able to take advantage of the current wireless standard, 802.11n, which offers as much as five times the speed and twice the range of old stalwart 802.11g. […] continued

With its announcement of the Kindle Fire tablet on Wednesday, Amazon did something worthy of Apple: it invented a niche that it is likely to control, not directly competitive with anything currently on the market.

You will see endless discussion about how the Kindle Fire compares to the iPad, or whether the Kindle Fire is an “iPad killer.” Don’t worry about that. It misses the point.

First, make sure you have the details in mind. Here’s one of the 7 billion articles today about the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s other announcements. If you want more background, Bloomberg’s article recaps Amazon’s history and describes how the new Kindles fit into Amazon’s business plan. […] continued

The request was deceptively simple:

Six very small offices want to share a single Internet connection. Each office wants to have a secure network for its own computers, not shared with the other offices. The offices want to share a single big Toshiba eStudio printer/scanner.

That shouldn’t be so hard, right?

It is remarkable how quickly networking becomes complicated. I don’t have any special instructions today, just a couple of anecdotes to help you understand why you might need help with your home or small office network.

Most people have simple needs: a single Internet connection for a single office; a router to let all the computers share the connection and connect to each other. […] continued

When you’re wrestling with your computer and wondering why everything has to be so complicated, maybe it will help to know that you’re not alone. It’s not any better behind the curtains where we pull the levers and pretend to be wizards. Here’s a random story about one of my frustrating moments this week.

One of the challenges of doing work with very small businesses is that there’s very little continuity. An IT person at a larger company will set up the same servers over and over, with shelves full of parts and a lot of time to learn the ins and outs of the equipment. […] continued