February 2003 EduNotes

EduCyber is pleased to present the February 2003 Edition of EduNotes. In this issue you'll hear from our old friend Ed Cyber, learn several ways you can save time with your computer, and read a few updates about other stories we've done recently. Enjoy and as always, send feedback to edunotes@educyber.com.
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Ed's Back
Our good friend Ed Cyber has agreed to return to answer your questions about computing. After a three year hiatus, we are pleased Ed is back with us. Now on to your questions:
Q: Ed, my old color printer is on its last legs. It makes a terrible grinding noise and I'm having a hard time even finding the right color cartridges for it anymore. What do you recommend for a printer?
Sincerely,
Nearly Printerless

A. Dear Mr. or Ms. Printerless,
You ask a very good question and with advancing technology, the kinds of printers I recommend have been changing over the last year or two. To answer your question, I need to ask you a question or two.
Do you ever use any color besides black? If not, you'll be more than happy with a desktop laser printer. It's going to cost you more than a color deskjet printer and yes the toner will cost more than the cartridges on a deskjet. The thing is, you get a much better print with a laser printer and the toner will last about 10 times longer than your cartridges, making the total cost of ownership lower than your deskjet.
What kind of volume do you print? And in what color?
If you do need to print in color occasionally, I recommend a low end deskjet to go with your laser printer. But when not in use make sure you store your cartridges properly or they'll dry out on you. If you print large reports or multiple copies of one page reports, I also recommend the laser. Low end laser printers can put out 12 to 15 pages per minute and a mid-range printer can easily do 20 pages per minute.
Ask around in your community to see if there is any place that can recycle the old printer for you. There may be a small fee involved but it may be illegal in your area to just throw the printer in the trash.
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Time Management and Computers
I've led seminars on the topic "Computers: Time wasters or time savers?" and I must say, I continue to be surprised by the way some use or rather abuse their computers.
First let's take a look at the way time is wasted on computers - in part to see if anything sounds familiar to you. There are the obvious ways like spending hours surfing the net on non-job related tasks like fantasy football, hobby research and the all too popular pornography sites. I heard of one woman who spent hours playing FreeCell every day and was astounded to learn that her boss could look at the statistics to see just how well she was doing - both at the game and at her job (not to well for the former and terrible for the latter).
But there are other job-related ways of wasting time that most people aren't even aware of until they learn time-saving ways of doing things. Putting form before content when writing a document or preparing a presentation is one of the bigger time-wasters and also leads to poorly written documents or poorly designed presentations. First, focus on the content. Get all the information you need in written form first. Once you have a cohesive and concise document, you can then look at format, changing fonts, adding borders or tables, trying different backgrounds or whatever else will enhance your content.
Using the Internet can be a great time-waster and we're not even referring to those who use the Net for tasks unrelated to their jobs (like making travel arrangements, checking the weather, playing fantasy football or visiting porn sites). What we're talking about is using the Net but not as efficiently as you could. One time saver we love is the Google bar. This handy tool can install into your Internet Explorer web browser and allow you to perform web searches no matter what site you are on. Instead of having to first visit the web site of your favorite search engine, the Google bar is always ready to go. Visit toolbar.google.com for more information.
Getting the right price for your office supplies can be done a lot faster online and you might just decide it saves you a lot more time by having free or very low cost deliveries. Check out your favorite office supply store online and also check some of the big online stores like amazon.com or buy.com to see if there might be even better prices available.
And one big time saver if you're in business is moving away from the dialup connection. Don't spend time watching the hour glass turn circles when you could be increasing your revenue. There are a multitude of hi-speed opportunities available. DSL and Cable are the favorite broadband choices but there are others. So if you don't qualify for these two choices, ISDN is an option (though certainly not a preferred one, it is better than dial up) as is wireless - Ricochet is back in the Denver metro area. And just about anyone anywhere can get a T1 or fractional T1, it's just a matter of getting the price right. If you've got some flexibility with your phones, you might want to go with a package deal - phone lines and high speed internet access from the same company. Whichever you choose, it is definitely time to stop wasting time and start using it to your advantage.
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Updates

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