Quality Computer Services

A hot topic in today’s news is that there is a proposed amendment to an existing act that threatens the financial support of our nation’s upper education institutions if those institutions prohibit or hinder distribution of academic information through the means of peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

The financial support of those institutions should not be contingent on whether or not their students have access to copyrighted information. There is plenty of copyrighted information available that students access on a regular basis through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. For example, books in the public domain, scientific research papers, open source computer applications and operating systems, educational audio and video, etc.

If those instutions chose to remove access to copyrighted information such as those examples previously listed, they would also lose their financial support therefore creating a bias in the education of the students with regards to what information they have available to them during their studies.

If you support our upper education institutions and the free exchange of information, please send the following letter to your state’s government representatives.

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Subject: Please VOTE AGAINST HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007

Please VOTE AGAINST HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007.

It has come to my attention via a news article appearing on CNET News that this bill is being proposed by some Democrats who apparently do not care about the future of our great nation by possibly taking away the scholastic opportunities of thousands of students who, without federal aid today, may never become the leaders of tomorrow.

Again, please VOTE AGAINST HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. The bill would require all universities to provide proof that they are or planning to implement technology that will prevent or deter media file sharing (both legal & illegal files). The other “alternative” would force universities to subscribe to monthly media download services such as Napster on a per-student basis for every student enrolled costing schools millions of dollars the government would end up pay through more federal aid loans.

Isn’t the federal deficit high enough without getting into more debt over MP3s?

My fear is that this bill permits the music and movie industry (MPAA & RIAA) to control the future of our nation. How many students would be forced to drop out if their federal aid was revoked?

I ask again, please VOTE AGAINST HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. As a resident of Wisconsin, I want to be proud of the place I call home and the people in government who represent me.

Sincerely,

Isaac Grover, Owner
Quality Computer Services of River Falls, Wisconsin
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To all Quality Computer Services customers:

Now you can take advantage of the Quality Computer Services online payment feature, where you can pay your invoice quickly and securely.

To pay your invoice online, go to our website at http://www.qcs-rf.com and click the “Pay Your Invoice Online” link on the right under “Company Resources”. Alternatively, you can go directly to http://www.qcs-rf.com/pay_online.html .

Just fill out our form by entering your e-mail address, invoice number (located on the top right hand corner of your invoice), and the invoice amount. Click “Submit”, and you will be securely redirected to a PayPal page where you can input either your billing credit card information or login to your PayPal account. Please note that we do not require you to have a PayPal account to use our online payment feature.

Upon successful submission, you will receive a confirmation email from PayPal, and you will be redirected to a thank-you page back at the Quality Computer Services website.

As always, thank you for using Quality Computer Services for your consulting, web hosting and web design needs!

We at Quality Computer Services recommend HP printers quite often, but as is the case with many large companies, their support options leave much to be desired.

This video is “not safe for work”, so please make sure you’re in appropriate company before downloading or viewing.

HPprinter.wmv

Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves
By Ken Fisher | Published: June 18, 2007 - 11:34PM CT

A new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges when their printers are telling them they’re out of ink, not when they necessarily are out of ink.

The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon’s printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak’s EasyShare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.

That’s the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren’t, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left.

The second issue is a familiar one: multi-ink cartridges can be rendered “empty” when only one color runs low. Multi-ink cartridges store three to five colors in a single cartridge. Printing too many photos from the air show will kill your cartridge faster than you can say “blue skies,” as dominant colors (say, “blue”) are used faster than the others. Therein lies the reason Epson backed the study: the company is singing the praises of its single-ink cartridge approach, an approach which is necessarily more efficient in terms of wasted ink because there’s only one color per cartridge, and thus only one cartridge to replace when that color runs out.

Single ink cartridges aren’t exactly perfect, however. Such cartridges still were reported as empty with an average of 20 percent of their ink left, which means that an entire cartridge worth of ink is wasted for every five which are used. Given the sky-high prices of ink, this is an alarming find. Epson’s own R360 posted the best numbers, with only 9 percent wasted. Yet again, Epson commissioned the tests, so we must ask what’s missing.

The study did not measure how much ink is lost due to lack of use, or through cleaning processes. Inkjet cartridges are known to suffer from quality problems if they are not used for long periods of time, sometimes “drying up.” This problem has been addressed in recent years, but it has not been eliminated.

The study also did not calculate the total cost per page, which arguably is more important than efficiency. If Epson’s multicartridge approach is more efficient, it could nonetheless still be more expensive per page than multi-ink cartridge systems. In its defense, Epson and TÜV Rheinland said that their study focused on the ecological impact of inkjet printing. This is a familiar argument: hybrid cars have also been criticized for their supposed efficiency, with debates raging as to whether or not your average driver will ever see cost savings from better miles-per-gallon given the relative expensive of hybrid engines.

As such, anyone in the market for an inkjet printer still needs to compare specific models to one another to get a feel for efficiency, and Epson’s efficiency claims needs to be weighed next to the comparative cost of competing inkjet solutions.

Still, the unintended result of this study is that regardless of the battle between single- and multi-ink cartridges, inkjet printers themselves are significantly off the mark when it comes to reporting the fullness of their cartridges. As the Eagles would say, you’re best off when you “take it, to the limit.” (Or with a laser printer, one can always do the toner cartridge cha-cha.)

Further reading:

Kodak inkjets doomed to failure, says Epson

Epson pushes single-ink cartridges

Reprinted from InfoWorld:

With all the hype regarding Open Source Software (OSS), we sometimes forget logic in the excitement of trying to get on board with this latest trend. What we really care about (or should care about) is making a sound business decision regarding software. Think you should be hopping on the OSS bandwagon just because the software is free? Think again. There’s a lot more to making a business decision for OSS than just the up front cost. As the Open Source zealots like to say, “Free as in freedom, not as in beer.”

Of course, there are the financial benefits! With an Open Source license which does not restrict your use of the software, you can install as many copies of the software as you want. Since there are no licensing fees, you could install two or two hundred seats with no additional costs beyond the labor required to do so. Without licensing fees, you pay only for hardware and support costs. So not only the upfront costs are lowered, so are the ongoing costs of software ownership.

So what else is there to Open Source Software? It’s the end of licensing restrictions that tell you how you can use your software. Tired of obtaining license keys from your software vendors every year or even every month just to keep your software running? Feel like your vendor is holding you hostage via your software licensing? With OSS, you never have to enter another annoying license code ever again. They just don’t exist in the world of OSS. You don’t even have to keep track of silly license validity seals or your purchasing paperwork to prove ownership. Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance, not the Boy Scouts!) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit. The BSA even takes out advertisements on Google search pages for and up to $200,000 reward a disgruntled ex-employee can receive for reporting your company to the BSA! That’s quite a powerful motivator.

My favorite benefit of Open Source Software is one that most people don’t even think about. What happens if something happens to the software vendor? What if the vendor gets bought by its big competitor and that new owner wants nothing to do with supporting you? What if the vendor is affected by a natural disaster in some other part of the country (or world) and can no longer function? A perfect example is a small auto insurance company that we recently did some work for. They use a custom CRM application that is designed for small independent auto insurance companies. It’s a special application that nobody has the source code for other than the vendor, whose technical division is located in Alabama. Our client has to get a license key from the vendor each month and enter that into the program, or else it will stop functioning. So what happens if a tornado rips through the vendor’s offices? That horrible tragedy would put a huge burden on our client the insurance company. The insurance company would not be able to use their custom application which has all their customer data including payment information. They could pay an IT consultant big money to extract their data and import it into another program. For the money that it would cost them to save their data, they could just hire us to write a new OSS application that performs all the same functions as their proprietary one.

Or how about the vendors who just abandon a not-very-successful software product? It’s not good business, but it happens. Maybe the software is not profitable and requires a lot of resources to maintain, so the vendor just stops development and no longer supports the software. Of course, that software vendor thinks about all the money that it spent in developing and supporting that software, so they feel that it’s theirs and nobody else should get it for free. So instead of releasing the software and its code to the public, the software just dies off because the vendor couldn’t let go of something it had spent its money on. And now your company is stuck with no support, no updates, no new features, and no bug fixes. Maybe you’re even stuck with non-functioning software like in my example of the auto insurance company. Open Source Software does not die because the developers stop working on it. The software is still available for download so anybody can make new features or fix bugs and security problems. Nobody is left without the software that their company needs to function.

And since this is Open Source Software, you can choose anyone you want to support the software. You might be able to pay the developers for support. You can certainly find a third party to support the software. With OSS, if you are not happy with the support you are getting, you do not have to get rid of the software. You just get rid of the vendor who is providing the support and pay a different vendor for support. Of course, if you find that the software is not doing the job for you and you want to use a different application, go ahead and do so. Open Source Software almost always uses Internet standards for data storage, so it’s simple to migrate your data out of one application and into another. The same cannot be said for a lot of proprietary software applications. Just like our auto insurance client above, pulling data out of the proprietary application and getting it into a new application can be quite a time consuming hassle!

I know that we’ve all been in the situation where you’re waiting on a new feature to be released from your proprietary software vendor. They promised it would be available two months ago, and they’ve been “working around the clock” to finish it, blah, blah, blah… In the world of Open Source Software, if you can’t wait on someone else’s schedule for a new feature, then you add that feature yourself. What? You don’t have programmers on staff? You can always outsource to a programming company and have them do it for you. Even better, you can pay the software project’s developers to add the feature. Many OSS developers aren’t accustomed to being paid for their efforts, so money can be a great motivator. The point is that you always have some options.

Sure, the cost savings of Open Source Software is a great benefit and a strong reason to choose OSS over proprietary software. However, you now have a few more points to consider as you mull over your software decisions. I hope that I have convinced you that the “freedom” benefits of Open Source Software are just as important as the “free” parts, if not more so.

High Mobley
Co-owner of q!Bang Solutions February 26, 2007

We are accepting used inkjet cartridges to be recycled in cooperation with the Middle School Youth Group at the River Falls United Methodist Church. The funds raised will be used for their youth ministry, promoting community involvement, and encouraging a city-wide youth ministry. For those who are interested in starting their own inkjet fundraiser, contact Empties4Cash.com.

For your convenience, we have postage-paid envelopes available so you can mail the cartridges in when they are empty. Ask us to mail you some envelopes.

The sister company of Empties4Cash.com, InkSmile.com, offers refurbished inkjet cartridges at a nice discount compared to the name brand inkjet cartridges. We have been using their inkjet cartridges now for about six months and have consistently purchased two refurbished cartridges for the price of one name brand cartridge. We’re happy with them - give them a try at InkSmile.com.

According to this notice at ICANN, RegisterFly, one of the larger domain name registrars, is no longer ICANN-certified to provide domain name registration services. Citing evidence of recent outages and mismanagement practices, RegisterFly may be opening up all their managed domains for a bulk transfer to another registrar.

We can’t confidently say that RegisterFly will come out of this slump, but with the volatility of Internet-based companies, we’re not expecting they will.

If your domain is registered through RegisterFly, we suggest transferring your domain to another registrar. If you need assistance with this process, contact us.

Here’s a copy of the email sent out to our clients this morning:

Good morning,

If you noticed that your time was an hour off when you started up your computer this morning, then your computer’s operating system has not been updated for the new Daylight Saving Time schedule that was passed into law in 2005 and went into effect early Sunday morning.

Please note that calendar applications such as Outlook may need to be updated separately. Contact your network administrator or technical support for more information.

If your computer is running Windows XP, the easy way to update your system is by going to www.windowsupdate.com, choosing “Express”, and following the prompts.

If your computer is running Windows XP and you have a good reason for not downloading all updates, then go to support.microsoft.com and download the update for your version of Windows XP. If you don’t know if you are using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows XP, choose the non-64-bit version.

If your home or office has a server running Windows 2003, your network administrator should read the notes and warnings at support.microsoft.com prior to initiating the update.

If your computer is running Windows 2000, Windows 98, or Windows ME, these versions of Windows are no longer eligible to receive support from Microsoft. However, you may obtain an unofficial time zone patch from www.intelliadmin.com .

If your computers and/or servers are running operating systems other than Windows, please contact your network administrator or technical support to administer the update for your particular operating system.

If you are unable to contact your network administrator or technical support, you may contact us for assistance with this or any other computer- or network-related issue now or in the future.

Isaac Grover, Owner
—
Quality Computer Services of River Falls, Wisconsin
Affordable I. T. Consulting, Web Design, and Web Hosting.
Commercial and Residential Inquiries Welcomed.
Web: http://www.qcs-rf.com

Good evening all,

I’m sending you this message because I know you listen to Internet radio.

Our friends at the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) are pushing legislation that would bankrupt almost every Internet radio station out there. I’ve been listening to Internet radio in various forms since 1997, and I do not want to see it disappear.

I’ve sent a letter to my Congressman, and you can do the same by visiting http://www.savenetradio.org/ .

The RIAA needs to be taught that we have free will, and if we find other sources of entertainment that do not benefit them, they either have to adjust or make way for other companies who can.

Help Save Internet Radio!

Found at http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/pfeiffer_vista/:

Guess what? Despite Microsoft’s efforts to provide for a more fluid and agreeable interface with Vista’s Aero, Pfeiffer Consulting found Vista to be even worse than Windows XP (SP2) –and of course Mac OS X. Their conclusion is backed with cold, hard research. Pfeiffer Consulting conducted the research based on an independently financed series of benchmarks that establish how Vista impacts User Interface Friction (UIF) and user efficiency.

Pfeiffer Consulting, a Paris/France based international research and consulting operation specialised in technology and media, just recently released a report on Windows Vista User Interface Friction (UIF). UIF is a Pfeiffer concept, which describes and quantifies the perceived differences in efficiency and user experience between operating system, applications, and digital devices. UIF defines the fluidity and productivity that can be observed when performing the same operation on different computer systems, programs or devices.

Pfeiffer Consulting looked for a specific number of issues that it knew under-performed in previous versions of Windows. With Windows Vista, Microsoft claims to have re-invented the Windows interface, making it simpler and more efficient to use. Some Mac users pointed out from the beginning that Aero looked suspiciously close to what Tiger has to offer. With Pfeiffer’s report in mind, their observations seem to miss the point. Even if Microsoft has been playing copycat all over, the results are simply lousy –there’s no other word for it.

The benchmarks run on Vista’s performance were a selection of what Pfeiffer can measure. The results of this new report are therefore nowhere near a complete assessment of the Windows Vista environment where it matters for creative professionals. The first benchmark Pfeiffer measured is Mouse Precision Mouse precision is essential for those who use the mouse to accurately position elements: CAD, graphic design, page layout, web design, etc.
Lack of Precision, Slow Menus and Desktop Operations Rule in Vista/Aero

The lack of precision is detrimental to such work, but can also affect daily tasks on a subliminal level. Pfeiffer says it may go unnoticed for many users, but can have a significant ripple effect in terms of efficiency and computer-related stress. In the area of Mouse Precision, Windows Vista scored worse than Windows XP. Where Mac OS X scored 0.08, Windows XP scored 0.40 and Vista/Aero 0.52. The lack of precision has worsened, but perhaps not by much.

However, other User Interface Friction has worsened by a substantial amount, even when compared to Windows XP. Pfeiffer’s report also covers Menu Latency –the slight lag that Windows imposes when displaying menus and submenus. Here, the report concludes Vista/Aero has worsened by no less than 20% compared to Windows XP.

Finally, Desktop Operations –such as opening folders, deleting elements, etc) also show Vista/Aero has become worse than Windows XP. The lag has increased by 16%.

Pfeiffer Consulting advises to think very carefully before migrating or upgrading to Windows Vista in the creative department. Their benchmarks show that creative professionals will actually become less productive than they would be when using Windows XP. Of course, Mac OS X remains a clear winner in this area. The reasons why that is so is explained in Pfeiffer’s full report on the matter. See the Pfeiffer site at http://www.pfeifferreport.com/.