Today’s mail brought the following notice:

“CompUSA has announced a comprehensive strategy to improve the company’s financial status. The realignment includes a cash infusion, store closures, major expense reductions and a corporate restructuring. The process began last week with the closing of four CompUSA stores and over the next 60-90 days, the company will close a total of 126 stores in the United States to focus on initiatives that enhance its top performing locations and provide knowledgeable service and support to all of our Business accounts.”

A date has not been announced, but San Bernardino’s CompUSA in the Tri City Shopping Center is one of those that will be closed.

For a number of years, HP has been publishing a “monthly duty cycle” in the specifications for its LaserJet printers. This has—to me—been a misleading number, as it appears to grossly overstate the hardiness of the printer. For example, the HP Color LaserJet 1600 has a monthly duty cycle of 20,000 pages, which seems way out of line for a “personal” office printer.

Many of our customers have purchased printers that are unsuited for the load placed upon them, based on the number of pages they think the machine will be able to print each month. The result is that these machines experience a high failure rate—and accompanying downtime—because the machine in truth cannot keep up with their demands.

HP recently moved to eliminate the confusion of the monthly duty cycle by also publishing a “recommended monthly print volume.” Their footnote for this spec reads “HP recommends that the number of printed pages per month be within the stated range for optimum device performance, based on factors including supplies replacement intervals and device life over an extended warranty period.” In other words, “recommended monthly print volume” means exactly what it says, and your machine will work best—and last longer—if you print no more than that each month. In our Color LaserJet 1600 example, the recommended monthly print volume is 300-1500 pages, a more reasonable figure for this model.

The monthly duty cycle is still published, but its footnote indicates that this spec is best used to compare models of similar printers. When looking at the paper output of one of my customers, I would in no way base the purchase of a printer on this number. Instead, the recommended monthly print volume will provide a far more accurate basis for the suitability of a given printer. Kudos to HP for making this more clear!

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.

Low-cost color printers have previously been found only in the ranks of inkjet printers, but two recent arrivals have brought that distinction to laser printers.

The Konica Minolta magicolor 2500W and the HP Color LaserJet 1600 couldn’t be more different. The former is a five-page-per-minute printer (in color), the latter is an eight-page-per-minute-printer. However, when printing in black-only mode, the magicolor 2600W blows away the LaserJet 1600 at 20 pages per minute compared to eight pages per minute.

Don’t let that sway you, however: if you’re buying a printer to print mostly text, you want that text to be readable. PC Magazine reports that the quality of the text on the 2600W is sub-par and the color output is such that the reviewer “wouldn’t hand the output to a client I want to impress.”

The cost per page is slightly lower for the 2600W at $0.11/0.022 (color/mono), but that’s based on purchasing the “Value Kit” of three, high-capacity color toners; most users will find spending $70 at a time on the color they need is preferable to buying the package deal at $349, so the cost per page for color printing will jump to $0.172. (The 1600’s cost per page is $0.154/0.03.) Keep in mind, too, that manufacturers don’t base their stated page yields on real-world examples of usage (or a consistent standard) and your cost per page for both machines will likely be higher.

Neither printer offers network printing at this price, but I wouldn’t be using either printer in a multiple-user environment, anyway. Either printer can accept an external network interface and the 1600 also accepts a second 250-sheet paper tray. (The 2600W is limited to a single, 200-sheet tray.)

Given their low cost and the fact that the machines ship with $162–$444 worth of initial supplies, these printers are essentially disposable when they break down. It’s not worth repairing either printer when the effective cost of a replacement is less than $200. My own personal experience in servicing printers leads me to believe that the Hewlett-Packard will perform better over time.

All of these factors cause me to concur with PC Magazine’s designation of “Editor’s Choice” for the HP Color LaserJet 1600.

Well, apparently the bar on disposable printers has been raised. After talking to Hewlett-Packard today, I found that a $500 printer is now not worth being fixed. My customer’s OfficeJet 7410—still a currently-shipping model—would be replaced by HP if it was still under warranty, but as it is not, HP will not even repair the printer at my customer’s expense.

I would, of course, repair the printer for my customer if parts were available, but HP doesn’t make them available. This is odd, since the ADF (automatic document feeder) pickup assembly and separation pad are similar to those available for the OfficeJet 7210—a $300 printer!

HP’s suggestion was, of course, “upgrade to a new printer.” The technician’s suggested upgrades (with the “discount” prices he offered) were the Photosmart 3210 ($160), the Photosmart 3310 ($313), and the Photosmart C6180 ($265). Umm, the first two are discontinued and the third can be purchased from shopping.hp.com for $240. Of course, there are other product options, but, in the end, my customer must buy a new machine.

It used to be that fixing your equipment was an attractive alternative to buying new. In this case, neither option is appealing. In a rare departure for me, I blame HP, who should have made these parts—common failure items—available.

(BTW, it’s been my long-held opinion that an ADF on a low-end machine is a repair waiting to happen. If you’re attracted to an inexpensive copier because it has an ADF, consider buying a more-expensive machine with an ADF that will withstand the rigors of regular use.)

The day has finally arrived, and Microsoft’s first operating system in five years has been released, although only to business customers. (The consumer version of Windows Vista will be released on January 30, 2007.) In addition, the latest version of Microsoft’s productivity suite, Office 2007, was released, replacing Office 2003.

With five different versions of Vista, you may be wondering, as I did, which one is right for you. While Microsoft has a breakdown of your choices, you may want to read this Extremetech.com review that makes a lot more sense. While many business owners will be able to get along with Vista Home Premium, Vista Business offers additional features like Volume Shadow Copy (keeping multiple versions of a file) and built-in faxing and scanning support, as well as the ability to use up to 128BG of RAM (for the 64-bit version), that may induce you to spend an additional $100.

However, you need to make sure your PC is ready for the upgrade. The OS will favor newer and relatively powerful machines, and a recent study   shows that 50% of existing business PCs are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Vista. “Generally speaking, any computer older than 24 months will be unlikely to support the Vista OS,” due to insufficient processing power, memory, or hard drive space.

Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor will help you determine not only if your current equipment will need an upgrade (or replacement), but also if your connected devices and installed programs will work with Vista. If you’re considering making the jump to Vista, be sure to run this tool to assess your computer’s state, then add up the costs for upgrading versus a new machine.

OfficeMedic can add memory to your existing system and we can also transfer your existing data to a new hard drive in preparation for upgrading to Vista. If your CPU is fast enough to support Vista, this could be a less-expensive alternative to buying a new computer.

“Got a great business idea? Then you could win free retail space in New York City and $100,000 to get your business started.”

As good as that sounds, this post is to let you know that Microsoft is giving away free copies of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007, whether or not you sign up for the contest. I haven’t had the opportunity to use it yet, but there are some features that look very exciting:

• Not just the look and feel of Microsoft Office, but actual integration with Word, Excel, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager
• Integration with eBay and PayPal
• Integrated online banking

Office Accounting Express 2007 is designed for small and home-based businesses, generally under 25 employees. The differences between it and Office Accounting Professional 2007 (which will be available in early 2007 for $149) appear to be in advanced accounting features. If you need to prepare quotes and sales orders; setup multiple price levels; track purchase orders; levy finance charges; or manage inventory, then wait for Professional. But many people will find that Express meets their needs very nicely.

You can find more information at the Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 home page.