Not one to be left behind, Canon will be increasing their prices on select toner cartridges—including the PC, A30, E40, L50 and S35 cartridges—by an average of 5%, effective April 1, 2012.

These are some of our most popular cartridges and we will not be increasing the prices of our remanufactured cartridges in the near future.

Following on the heels of my last post comes news that Lexmark is increasing its wholesale prices on imaging supplies by 3-7%. Happy New Year!

From HP:

Effective January 1, 2012, the prices of toner cartridges will increase by approximately 2 percent.  In addition to this 2 percent increase, HP will increase list prices on 27 select HP legacy toner cartridges.

This move is a result of HP’s standard portfolio management process. As part of this process HP as manufacturer regularly reviews pricing for all its products and makes adjustments, as appropriate.

Affected legacy printers include the 5si/8000, 8100, 4000, and 4100 models. I mention these models because they are the most popular of the legacy printers that OfficeMedic supports, driven by the high page yield afforded by their cartridges. We will continue to provide remanufactured toner cartridges (and service) for these printers, and we expect no price increase on them in 2012.

From Popular Science:

A Memjet printer cranks out photo-quality pages at four times the rate of the average laser model and much more quickly than your standard inkjet. The nine-inch fixed print head covers the width of a letter-size sheet of paper. As the paper passes underneath, 70,400 nozzles—17 times as many as in an inkjet—deposit 774 million dots of ink per second.

That’s just crazy fast. See the video here.

When Apple introduced the ability to print from the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch through its AirPrint technology, users quickly found that their choices of printers to print from were quite limited. And while the list of compatible printers continues to grow, users with older printers don’t want to buy new equipment just to print from their iOS device.

Most printer manufacturers have stepped into the breach and are offering (free) apps to print directly to select new and legacy printers. For example:

Brother iPrint&Scan
Canon Easy-PhotoPrint
Epson iPrint
HP ePrint Home & Biz
HP ePrint & Share
LexPrint
Lexmark Mobile Printing

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and doesn’t include third-party apps which can print to many printers across different manufacturers’ lines. I’d be interested in hearing about your success with these apps and your experience with other apps as well.

I’ve found that Printopia works well to print to any printer on my network, without the need to add an additional app to my iPad. It’s a Mac-only application; let me know what you use for Windows and Linux.

According to Gazelle, the nation’s largest electronics “reCommerce” company, Americans throw away 130,000 computers a day. That doesn’t include the thousands of copiers, printers and fax machines discarded each day from offices just like yours. (Or the 100 million cell phones disposed of each year.)

If you’re upgrading your computer, please don’t throw it away! Besides the parts that aren’t biodegradable, there are other parts that leech toxic chemicals into the soil and contaminate our groundwater. Take advantage of Gazelle or a similar service; see if they will pay you for your old desktop or laptop, or offer free shipping to recycle your worthless computer when combined with another item.

When it comes to your other office equipment, however, Gazelle can’t help. They just don’t deal with those devices. But don’t despair! (And don’t toss them on the trash heap.)

For many years, as our clients’ equipment has aged and we’ve replaced them with newer models, we’ve taken the old units and turned them in to the few e-waste recyclers in the area. In recent days, however, that’s gotten easier for us, as organizations like schools and service groups have partnered with the recyclers and offer “e-waste recycling days” as part of their fundraising efforts.

Finding out about those events can be difficult; we usually only know about them as a result of seeing a banner announcing the event as we drive around. Today, though, we’re posting a new page on the site to let you know about your e-waste recycling options and we’ll keep it updated with upcoming recycling drives as we find out about them. Please be sure to let us know about events in your area, too!

Although for years I’ve warned users to stay away from Internet Explorer, if you insist upon using that browser you really need to be using the latest version. Over at Windows Secrets, Susan Bradley has some great instructions for making the jump to IE 9. To keep your computer safer and provide a reliable surfing experience, take a few minutes to read and upgrade.

(And you [you know who you are!] really need to stop using IE 6. That abomination needs to be eradicated from the Internet. Do your part to keep the Internet clean and safe.)

Firefox users, you probably are already aware that version 5 has recently been released, just three months after version 4 and only two months before version 6 is scheduled to be released. With this rapid release schedule, Mozilla is attempting to keep up with Chrome, which is a currently at version 12. (Version numbers really don’t seem to mean anything anymore.)

Customer: “Hi, my laser printer has a flashing light that say ‘change toner’. What must I do to fix that?”

Me: “Well, sir, your toner cartridge is empty. You just need to replace it.”

Customer: “What is a toner?”

Me: “It’s the ink that your printer need to print on the paper.”

Customer: “What! How come it needs ink? It’s a laser printer! Doesn’t the laser directly write on the paper without ink?”

More funny & stupid customer quotes at Not Always Right.

Experts are saying that it would be a good idea to wait to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, at least for a month, until performance and security issues are dealt with by Microsoft. Better yet, consider using Firefox instead, which is both faster and more secure than IE.

Steve Gibson also has some reservations about IE8 (look for episode #189 of Security Now!), one of which is its inability to fully block third-party cookies.

Having trouble removing McAfee SiteAdvisor or another McAfee product? Try the company’s Consumer Products Removal Tool—it should remove every last trace of a stubborn program.