Five new remanufactured products hit our shelves this month, the TN580 toner cartridge and four items for the HP Color LaserJet 2600.

The TN80 cartridge is compatible with Brother’s HL-5240, HL-5250DN, HL-5250DNT, and HL-5280DW laser printers; their MFC-8460N, MFC-8860DN, and MFC-8870DW multi-function printers; and the DCP-8060 and DCP-8065DN digital copier/printers. The TN580 has a yield of 7,000 pages and the OfficeMedic price is $69.99 (compare to OfficeDepot’s price of $95.99 for the OEM cartridge). We do not yet have an arrival date for the DR520 imaging drum for these machines.

Cyan, magenta, yellow and black toner cartridges are available now for the Color LaserJet 2600 series of printers. The black cartridge has a yield of 2,500 pages and is priced at $66.95; the color cartridges are $74.95 with a 2,000 page yield.

If you’re a Mac user and had Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve installed, you likely weren’t affected by the latest e-mail trojan masquerading as a video clip. Our own computers registered 15 of these messages stopped by the spam filter.

Unlike many computer techs, I won’t say “don’t open e-mail attachments.” But I’m tempted to. I suppose I could say, “Don’t open e-mail attachments unless you know exactly what it is and the person that sent it to you told you in a separate conversation that it was coming.” If so, you can probably rest assured that it’s not a virus or spyware that will not only infect your computer, but also begin attacking other computers.

No matter how well you’re protected, your behavior can compromise your computer’s safety. Safe computing begins with you, not your computer.

Here we are less than a week away from the release of Windows Vista (well, for consumers, that is—business users were blessed two months ago) and PCMag.com has an article on what you need to know to do an in-place upgrade from Windows XP to Vista.

Of course, this assumes that your system can handle Windows Vista: if it’s more than two years old it likely will not be up to the task. Be sure to check out the system requirements before you stay up late to buy the upgrade.

OfficeMedic (and PC Magazine) recommends you backup your existing installation before an upgrade of this magnitude. If you like, we’ll come out and perform that backup for you so that your data is completely safe in the event that something goes wrong during the upgrade. Call us to find out your options.

According to a report by Lyra Research, “Staples is expected to remove all its Staples-branded HP ink and toner cartridges from retail stores early in the first quarter of this year [2007], and the same fate may also be planned for Staples-branded Epson compatibles.”

Will Office Depot, OfficeMax and other big office supply retailers follow suit? Time will certainly tell, but OfficeMedic will continue to offer you compatible ink and toner to save you 20-40% on your supplies costs.