Pulp Free

As part of my new work-from-home efforts, I received an HP All-in-One OfficeJet 6310 for my printing, scanning, and faxing needs. For a retail price of around $150, I was pretty skeptical. However, after a few days of using it I have to say I’m quite impressed with it’s printing abilities and my need for an occasional copy of a hotel receipt.

So I was recently saddened when a needed reinstall of my desktop Windows XP started throwing up errors when trying to print a test page to it. I’ve installed the network drivers several times… It’s a pretty straight forward effort. (And printing to my Brother HL-5250DN worked just fine…)

setup.exe -h HostName

Heck - that’s if you use the corporate drivers. The “home” drivers will even scan your network for the printer.

So - XP’s firewall was disabled, virus software was disabled - no errors messages on the printer driver install. I couldn’t even share to it when I was successfully able to install it on a different machine. What’s going on here?

Well - yes. I did one thing differently. I installed Windows XP SP3. Love the service packs.

A removal of SP3 left my computer is a bit of a mess since I had already installed a lot of programs and drivers after the SP3 install… But I was able to print. Instantly.

A quick Google the first time around didn’t show much promising hits. But I was searching specifically for issues related to the 6310. Come to find out that others are having the issue if you search for “network printing issues sp3” you’ll get a few stray users with similar problems… All inconclusive in the fix.

Well - I just didn’t have the problem to keep looking. I’m sticking with SP2 for now. I’ll let somebody else troubleshoot the problem this time around… (I’m guessing that my Brother laser printer is working since the printer itself has a network spooler built into it… I just connected to it via HTTP rather than through the HP software…)

Its been about 16 months since the last major computer purchase arrived at my house. That being said, I long debated on what the next addition to the family would be. First it was an internal discussion on the merits of PS3 versus HTPC (that would be Home Theater Personal Computer). That lasted for about 2 days and went something like this:

“I already have a Wii and an XBOX360… Do I need to pick up a PS3 as well?”

“You really like putting computers together… What would be the challenge of simply plugging something in and having it just work?”

“Do you even need anything at all?”

Essentially, C & I picked up a new Sony XBR4 52″ LCD Flat Panel television as part of our 1-year anniversary. Well, more like… I finally was able to sell my Mitsubishi 65″ rear-projection HDTV which seemingly was the only requirement needed to get a new flat panel. After that, the rest of the room just needed to be, ahem… “finished”. Except for making a decision on what stand our mount to pick up (I’m really leaning on a Whalen 52″ Tiered TV Console from, yes… Best Buy - and it’s on sale right now) - the last piece of the puzzle was to find a way to really good HD player without sounding like a cyclone was in the room. (Sorry XBOX360, you’re just too loud for our fancy TV…)

So yes, while we’ve been dazzled with HDTV for some 6 years or so, it was time to tidy up the cables and make a presentable showcase for our Home Theater efforts. So over the next few days (or so, hopefully) - I’ll detail out my efforts to complete a fairly reasonable HTPC equipped enough to handle playback of 1080p Blu ray or just about any other format known to man (I did pickup an HD-DVD drive for my XBOX360 - first time being on the wrong format for sure….)

For the components, I headed to my trusted friend, NewEgg (the best ever…) and placed my order today. What did I choose?

• CPU - AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
• Memory - OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
• Optical Drive - LG GGC-H20L 16X Blu-ray/HD DVD drive
• Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM
• HTPC Case - Antec Aluminum Veris Fusion Black 430 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case with IR receiver
• Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD

There’s been a lot of great reviews posted about this great motherboard/CPU combination so I’m hoping for some great HDTV performance. No need to any fancy gaming as I leave that to my consoles or my older Dell 9100. I’m just looking at creating a nice, build-to-order Home Theater appliance that is fairly quiet (like my HD TiVo) and works (yes - I’m hoping that HDMI & HDCP just work flawlessly… They better!!) It’s also my first foray into AMD territory… But I’m liking the low power consumption and the quietness that should go along with it…

Stay tuned for more updates… And feel free to comment on your own experiences…

As it’s probably no surprise by now, I both hate Netflix and love them all at the same time. It’s similar to my relationship with Best Buy except that I don’t spend as much money with Netflix. Today I received a nice email stating that their profiles were going away in order to improve their Web site.

C and I actually love this feature. She gets to put DVDs in her queue, I put DVDs in my queue… Separate but very manageable. Heck - even her name shows up on the address label! I have to wonder what Netflix is doing to keep customers around? It’s not that I’m going to pack up and head to Blockbuster over this, but why take out features that users actually enjoy and use? (Thankfully having an AJAX enabled queue management system isn’t going away any time soon! I mean, using numbers to re-order your queue was a real pain in the… well - you know…)

I also thought it very clever for Netflix to place tracker information for anybody that clicked on the FAQ link… Maybe if I call the phone number, they can get my Caller ID as well…

It’s also good to see that others are a bit touched off by this as well… A quick few minutes on Google turned up another happy customer…

It’s your lucky day… I’m sharing not just one Earworm, but two! The single from Kimberly Locke “Fall” was actually released back in 2007 from her album “Based On A True Story“. I have to say, when visited a few Web sites to gather up the history of this song, I was a little disappointed. While I’m really stuck on this Almighty Club Mix version, the original was somewhat “ho-hum”. Perhaps I’m biased in my dance anthem music snobbery, but even on her American Idol visit to sing this song is was boring. Digging a bit more, come to find out there’s a country version of this song by Clay Walker as well (if you feel compelled to feel sick to your stomach, view the video on YouTube).

The original, non-remix version of this song not-withstanding, Kimberly has really had a few songs in her arsenal that I’ve been impressed with. 8th World Wonder & Change can definitely be listened to several times… So it seems (at least for now) “Fall” is going to be a great follow up… (As long as you stick to the dance remixes!)

Now it’s time for you to decide…

Kimberley Locke - Fall (Almighty Club Mix) - (Song Sample)

I’ve had this tune for a few weeks that brought me back to my Daft Punk days (don’t try to draw the correlations - you’ll probably simple make fun of me…) But I’m a sucker for vocoders and sine waves… Which Chris Brown’s “Forever” release has plenty of. I think it’s somewhere around #8 on some sales chart so it seems that most of you have probably already heard this at some point. Nevertheless, I’ll take my two week tardiness and list it up here… It’s still on my top playlist!

Obviously feel free to find a bit more at the overlinked Wikipedia or Chris Brown’s Web site…

I now bring you your own taste…

Chris Brown - Forever - (Song Sample)