Archive for May, 2008

8 Surefire Ways to Get Your Students to Save Ink and Paper

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

As a teacher, your job is not limited to teaching your students the rudiments of math, the foundations of science, the secrets of history, or the wonders of literature. It is also your job to teach your students to be responsible. Encourage your students to save on ink and paper by using these tips:

1. Require at least a couple of book sources for your assigned papers.

Requiring your students to use book sources will encourage them to actually read rather than scan or use other options like photocopying book pages using recycled paper for their sources instead of printing Internet pages.

2. Encourage the use of the draft setting for first drafts.

If you require your students to submit drafts of their papers, encourage them to use their printers’ draft setting. Since you will undoubtedly end up marking the pages in red, it’s a waste of good ink and paper. Using the draft setting will use little ink and thus, save a lot.

3. Teach students to proofread papers prior to printing.

Teach your students to check for grammar, spelling, and factual errors in their papers prior to printing. This will help them save ink and paper by preventing a lot of reprints due to errors in the text.

4. Extol the virtues of “Print Preview.”

Stress the importance of previewing pages before printing. This ensures that everything will look like they should on paper. Doing so will let them save ink and paper by preventing misprints.

5. Opt for online submissions whenever possible.

For short assignments, require your students to submit their papers online. Electronic submissions do not use ink and paper so students will be able to save these resources for more detailed presentations.

6. Stress the importance of turning off the printer properly.

Turning off printers instantly may cause the print heads to stop moving before they are in their proper positions. This can cause ink to dry up faster.

7. Require the use of black ink for text-only papers.

If an assignment does not require complicated charts or images, require your students to use only black ink. Alternatively, if picture is needed to stress a point, allow the use of gray-scaled images.

8. Make students understand that quality is better the quantity.

A longer paper does not guarantee a better grade compared to a shorter paper with more substance. Make your students understand this and they will submit shorter papers that are straightforward and more substantial. This also goes for printer inks. Tell students that it’s better to buy a more expensive ink cartridge that doesn’t smudge than a lot of cheaper cartridges that smudge or dry up without reason.

This Article is written by James Kara Murat from PrintCountry, the contributor of PrintCountry FAQ. A longer version of this article is located at 8 Surefire Ways to Get Your Students to Save Ink and Paper, and related resources can be found at Canon PIXMA MP760.

Bravo Printer Ink Cartridges

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

With the various set of printer ink cartridges on the market, home offices and small businesses are grinning from ear to ear for having a wide choice of printer inks to choose from. With several high quality printer ink cartridge online stores and different review articles such as this one, consumers can make an informed decision on their choice quality printer inks based on their needs.

Bravo printer inks are part of a bigger conglomerate of Primera printer products. Primera specializes in their exceptional CD and DVD label writers and disc publishers. With Bravo series disc publishers, they allow companies to duplicate CD labels in no time.

The high quality printer inks made by Bravo is a hot sell for many new media hobbyist who wants a cool storage for their favorite TV shows, mp3 files, DVD movies, and pictures. Bravo printer inks have a set of color and black-and-white ink cartridges to handle label printing jobs from any design made. With Bravo inks, you can set your Photoshop creations into the CD label maker with great ease. Primera Bravo duplicators and printer ink cartridges could be the new creative outlet for budding artists who want to add spunk to the CD collection.

Bravo printer ink cartridges accompany Primera Bravo duplicators for their ease of use. CD and DVD publishers will find these products as a plug and play device that works right off the box.

For power users, there are several Bravo printer ink cartridges on the market. Bravo printer inks are made to FCC standards and engineered with automated facilities to ensure high quality and no-frills products. Its best feature is that even though Bravo printer inks are specially made for DVD and CD duplicators.

Bravo printer ink cartridges have gotten encouraging reviews from its consumer base. Bravo printer inks are highly praised by audio enthusiast, Mac users, video professionals, and different organizations. If you want to give your CD presentations and your company an edge, Primera Bravo’s ease of use and heavy community support will help you accomplish different CD printing tasks to utmost effectiveness.

Primera Bravo inkjet cartridges are sold at printer online stores such as PrintCountry.com. PrintCountry offers various perks and benefits such as fast shipping options, price matching, and convenient checkout for an enhances shopping experience. If you wish to apply for bulk orders for Bravo inkjet cartridges, you can avail of discounts and free shipping. If you are a company who specialize in CD duplication, PrintCountry can offer a reliable printer ink supply for your CD printers. With Primera Bravo inkjet cartridges, your new media storage is placed at a new high.

This Article is written by James Kara Murat from PrintCountry.com, the contributor of PrintCountry FAQ. Read more about the subject at Bravo Printer Ink Cartridges, and related resources can be found at Printer Ink Cartridge Articles.

Home Wireless Network Security Issues

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Running a business from home has its advantages, including no commute, a more accommodating work schedule, fresh coffee and home-cooked meals at any time you want.

But running a business from home using a home wireless local area network (WLAN) with your computer may lead to thievery of confidential information and hacker or virus penetration unless proper actions are taken. As WLANs send information back and forth over radio waves, someone with the right type of receiver in your immediate area could be picking up the transmission, thus acquiring access to your computer.

Here is a list of things that you should consider as a result of implementing a home wireless network setup used your business:

Viruses could be loaded onto your laptop which could be transferred to the company’s network when you go back to work.

Up to 75 per cent of home wireless network WLAN users do not have standard security features installed, and 20 per cent are left completely open as default configurations and are not secured, but are made for the users to have their network up and running ASAP.

It is recommended that home wireless network router/access point system setups be always done though a wired client.

Always change the default administrative password on your home wireless network router/access points to a secured password.

Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption on both card and access point. Change your WEP keys periodically. If equipment does not support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it. Although there are security issues with WEP, it represents minimum level of security, and it should be enabled.

Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hard to guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to this SSID by default.

Setup router/access points so as to not broadcast the SSID. The same SSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This feature may not be available on all equipment.

Setup your home wireless network router to block anonymous internet requests or pings.

On each computer having a wireless network card, network connection properties should be configured to allow connection to Access Point Networks Only. Computer to computer (peer to peer) connections should not be allowed.

Enable MAC filtering. Deny connection to wireless network for unspecified MAC addresses. MAC or physical addresses are accessible through your computer device wireless network connection setup and they are physically written on network cards. When adding new wireless cards / computer to the network, their MAC addresses should be registered with the router /access point.

Your home wireless network router should have firewall features enabled and demilitarized zone (DMZ) feature disabled. Periodically test your hardware and personal firewalls using Shields Up test available at http://www.grc.com. All computers should have a properly configured personal firewall in addition to a hardware firewall.

Update router/access point firmware when new versions become available.

Locate router/access points away from strangers so they cannot reset the router/access point to default settings. Also, locate router/access points in the middle of the building rather than near windows to limit signal coverage outside the building.

You should know that nothing is 100%. While none of the actions suggested above will provide full 100% protection, countermeasures do exist that will help. The good collection of suggested preventative actions contained herein can help you deter an intruder trying to access your home wireless network. This deterrant then makes other insecure networks easier targets for the intruder to persue.

Greg Lietz is an internet business man, freelance writer and computer enthusiast. His websites provide information on wireless internet networking and personal computer hardware that may be of interest to you.

Print Management Solutions to Avoid Docuwaste and Improve Efficiency

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

It is estimated that in 2006 European businesses wasted over 9 billion euros through inefficient business practices, up from 8.4 billion euros in 2004. Much of this waste is put down to “Docuwaste” - a massive over-indulgence in print usage which waste untold reams of paper and gallons of ink and toner - for no financial gain to anyone.

However, there is some evidence in the UK, where Docuwaste actually decreased by 4% in the same period, that businesses are taking note of this massive problem. This could be down to the fact that a large number of financial organisations in the UK need to control print output for compliance reasons, and are using Print management software applications to monitor, control and actually charge for printer use.

Such print management software applications are often introduced as part of a managed print service by external suppliers. But applications are now often included at no additional cost with printers (e.g. Hewlett Packard’s Web Jetadmin). Such systems don’t simply work “reactively” to provide detailed reports on device usage, but they can also be used proactively to ensure that any printing policies (e.g. duplex double sided printing) or to restrict access to certain features (e.g. colour printing) or to set print quotas per team, workgroup or department.

More about print autorouting

Why not ensure that print jobs are sent to the printer best suited to the task? This can be done using an auto-routing programme, such as is provided with any reasonable-quality print management software suite. Thus in an example scenario, where a user wants to send a 2 page document to a desktop printer (ideal for the task) then the software would allow this. However, if the same user tried to send a 200-page document to the same printer, the software will alert the user, and send it to the more appropriate high speed departmental or workgroup Multifunctional high speed device.

Email printing control

Print management software rules can also be set for specific applications, so that an administrator could enforce a policy not to print email messages, for example. Or it could be configured so that email messages were only ever printed in black and white, thus avoiding a colour click charge every time an email with a coloured logo or a highlighted email address was printed.

Other efficiencies introduced

How about the time wasting which can create hidden costs? By automatically routing jobs from an out-of-order printer to one that actually is working can be one example. Another example is the prioritising of print jobs for designated individuals with important deadlines to meet.

Secure print solutions - “follow me” printing

More than half of those who replied to a recent Fujitsu Siemens’ survey said that they had printed the same document several times by mistake and 43% said that they had mistakenly picked up someone else’s printout. Such wasteful - and frustrating - problems can be avoided using Secure Print Programmes. These are more generally known by the term “follow me printing”. What happens is that the print job is held on a server on a server until the owner releases them by entering a code or swiping a card on a network printer. Because the document is not printed until the user is at the machine, prints do not have a chance to fall into the wrong hands or get removed by someone else.

Chargebacks

Another major advantage of print job tracking is that it becomes possible to charge customers or departments for the prints they make. Cost recovery solutions, again a part of any good print management software suite, can be used to charge customers by invoice or through pre-pay systems.

Jimi St. Pierre writes for several Office Equipment suppliers in the UK, including print management software consultants Principal of Horsham, England. Officemagic. The Principal range of inkjet printers, laser printers and multifunctional printers can be found at => http://www.principalcorp.co.uk/

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Sunday, May 4th, 2008

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