Category: Tech Tuesday

Tech Tuesday: New printer, Epson Stylus NX625

Posted on by Kathleen
Epson Stylus NX625

I made a decision and stuck with it, not like that whole not renewing Ancestry.com thing. (I may or may not have renewed it at 11:30pm last night. I’m weak.) After researching too many printers then I should have the other day, I finally found my replacement. I decided on the Epson Stylus NX625. At first I was going to get my first choice, but in the time I took to think about it and when I decided to get it, the website had taken it off sale. Having decided that happened for a reason, I went back to the drawing board and was going to get the Epson Stylus 420. Upon further review, I noticed that the 625 was actually only $20 more expensive and I knew I had $10 in reward points I could use. So I went with the 625.

Here are the things I like about it:

  • It set up wirelessly so easily. It gave me a little trouble but I ended up hooking it up temporarily with a USB and setting it up. Once it was installed, I unplugged the USB, set up the wireless and nothing could stop me! All my computers now print to the one printer and I can have my desktop off and print from my laptop. That’s a big thing for me because I like to shut off my desktop and use my laptop when I want to actually focus on genealogy.
  • The print quality is much better then my previous printer! I didn’t see anything wrong with my previous printer’s quality. However, the new one is much crisper and faster then the old one.
  • The paper loading is much easier. There is a paper tray on the bottom that pulls all the way out so I can load the paper. My old printer didn’t have a tray. You just kind of laid the paper in place and hoped it was correct.
  • Double sided printing. This is by far my favorite thing. I can print on the front and back of the paper without doing anything but clicking a box! It’s beautiful and marvelous and fantastic all in one.
There aren’t many but there are a few drawbacks so far:
  • The price of the color ink is a bit high for my tastes, but so far I think it’s going to last longer then the old printer did. So I don’t mind paying a bit more. The high prices are even for the high capacity ink. So I have a feeling it will definitely be worth it.
  • The SD card doesn’t automatically transfer pictures. I can manually do it, but before when I inserted my memory card into the reader, Windows would pop up and ask if I’d like to import pictures. So while this isn’t a deal breaker, it might mean I transfer pictures a little less.
Overall, I think I made a good purchase and I can’t wait to dig in and finally print out some things I haven’t been able to!
Note: I was not asked to write this review. I was not compensated by either company to write this review.

Tech Tuesday: Slide Updates

Posted on by Kathleen

I hope everyone reading this had a very, merry Christmas! I’ve been enjoying a few new gadgets. The first gadget I got was a slide viewer that I mentioned earlier this month. I found a few slides that I really wish I could get prints of. They were of my Aunt Diane and some of their family photos. The problem was, I didn’t know what to do. So I went to Google and it brought me up a few options. One of them didn’t cost me a penny!

It turned out that my mother’s scanner has a slide scanner template built into the top. All I had to do was slide the placeholder off and slide my slides in. Then hit the button for film scan. This method will also work for negatives! So if you have a scanner, take a second to study the inside of it’s lid. You might have this feature too! Pressing the film scan button brought up the software that came with the scanner where I could choose between a negative or positive/slide.

Now I can share these photos with my family on Facebook, and I can print them out and frame them for individuals!

I really can’t wait to dig in and see what other treasures I find. It’s really difficult to find pictures of my aunts and dad when they were younger. It’s even more difficult to find pictures of their brother Stevie, who is no longer with us.

By the way, for my regular readers, the house Dad’s family is posing in is in fact the Park Avenue house. There are a bunch of inside shots among the slides!

Tech Tuesday: Kodak All-in-One

Posted on by Kathleen

Note: I have no affiliation with Kodak. I am not being compensated for this post. I’m just a Kodak user, who enjoys my Kodak products.

If you spend any amount of time with my family, you’ll realize we’re gadget people. It’s so very obvious. I’m not talking about my siblings. I’m talking about my extended family too. On my Dad’s side, our family reunions are littered with gadget talk.

When I started to think about what I would write about for Tech Tuesday, the first thing that come to mind is my printer/scanner combo. It’s not the fanciest or most advanced piece of technology I own, but it’s the most used by far.

Don’t let the clutter on top fool you, I use this printer/scanner combo on a daily basis when I’m busy. I only clutter it because I like the tiger and it makes me smile when lines of code make my eyes cross.

What a difference flash makes in a picture, huh? Anyway, here’s the scanner opened up to show you the top. I can easily fit 5 or 6 of my more historical pictures onto this scanner. The Kodak scanner software even picks up the different pictures when it scans. It doesn’t always pick them up, but a quick ‘Fix Scan’ action allows me to delineate where each picture is.

One of the other things that sold me on the printer is the memory card reader. My computer doesn’t have one and I can’t find one that will fit in my computer. So this helps me so much. In fact, ALL my digital camera pictures are transferred to my hard drive through this printer. It’s as simple as putting the card in and selecting the AutoPlay prompt that allows me to Import Pictures through Windows. I set my settings to always transfer to my second hard drive in the Camera Pictures folder into another folder that displays the date of transfer. Organization of my pictures keeps me sane.

Here’s a picture to show where the paper feeds in from. When I’m not printing, I like to keep the tray up to save space. It doesn’t seem like a lot of space but I don’t like a lot of stuff near my arms when I’m coding websites. It’s just one of my things. Also, on the bottom right is a USB slot. I can hook my camera directly into that spot if I need to. I don’t use that slot for the most part. I really only use it when I forget to put my memory card back into my camera and I need pictures off the camera memory.

Here are the controls on the top of the printer.

They have a red blinking light for when you’re low on ink (which I am, but I caught it on an off blink!) and another light for a paper jam (which I don’t have). The Scan button is just what it says. My favorite part of this printer is the Copy button. My mom is a school bus driver and every year she has to make a seating chart. It’s never a quick process. So I usually take her seating chart blank form and I change quantity to 10 or 15 and hit Copy. The printer makes 10 copies using the scanner portion to copy the form. As you can see, you can also switch between black/color and 100% scale or Fit to Page. When I’m copying a form, I don’t worry about the scale. If I were copying a picture though, I might hit fit to page so that I could have a full size picture.

I wouldn’t change much about my printer/scanner combo. In fact, the only thing I’d change today would be to ugrade to the newer wireless model. The picture above is the newer model and it’s about the same price that I paid for mine. So that’s really the only thing I’d change about this. I’m not sure what quirks of fate would come with a wireless setup though, so do that at your own risk.

So that’s my Tech Tuesday pick. I find this a very efficient and useful product. Ink refills only cost $20 for both color and black. The ink does run down a little fast compared to some of my older printers but the quality is also better.

Note Again: I have no affiliation with Kodak. I am not being compensated for this post. I’m just a Kodak user, who enjoys my Kodak products.