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Once again your printer is out of ink way before you think there is any way it should be. Yet somehow, BOOM. It just refuses to print another page until you replace the cartridge. Well, when Farhad Manjoo’s Brother printer suddenly stopped printing; he started to wonder if his printer wasn’t simply lying to him that it was out of toner just so he would buy more before he actually even needed it. His prints hadn’t been fading at all; his printer just suddenly simply refused to keep going without a new cartridge.

Manjoo decided to look to the ‘Net for a way around this. And he indeed found some answers. He learned that by covering up the sides of his toner cartridge with a piece of electrical tape he could “trick” his printer into thinking it was full. He says the printer was been chugging along just fine ever since...eight months and hundreds of pages down the road...printing out perfect pages.

It’s not just Manjoo this had happened to, the whole “you don’t really need a new cartridge but your printer tells you that you do” bit.  The problem is actually becoming so widespread that there have actually been class action lawsuits filed against Epson and Hewlett-Packard over the trickery. It seems this is even more common for inkjets than laser printers...because inkjets make their money off, guess what? The ink.

There are many ways to get extra life out of your printer ink or toner, from the standard “shake the heck out of it” approach, to finding the options in your menus that will override “cartridge check” features. In his Slate article though, Manjoo suggests a web search for specific advice, since there are just so many kinds of printers out there. He suggests looking up the model of your printer along with words like toner, override, cheap, and perhaps lying bastards.  Although if that fails, FixYourOwnPrinter is a pretty good place to start.

Read [Slate]

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Read more about the LG Viewty.

Electric bikes are moving up in the world -- they're now receiving a breezy embrace from public radio. On a recent airing of NPR's All Things Considered, Senior Correspondent John McChesney featured the E-bikes and found out the difference between a fully powered e-motor and his own pedaling will.

His early verdict: E-bikes make him wheeze, but delightfully, and not as much as regular bikes.

In the segment, McChesney talks with a few commuters that fit one specific e-bike profile: older and slightly out of shape. One particular couple simplifies the attraction: E-bikes 'make biking possible for more marginal riders.'

As a couple living in San Francisco's Potrero Hill district (renowned for hills that attract biking masochists), they see their move to e-bikes as a consequence of the hardship of bike commuting -- it's too much sweat and a hard slog to do it every day after a hard day's work.

In addition, the couple mentions the 'shock pity' they were continually subjected to by bike enthusiasts and shop managers. Like we mentioned previously, hard-core bikers often scoff at the mere suggestion of bikes assisted by electric motors. But that’s just something people are going to have to get over.

After all, hush puppy-wearing hipsters have been seen hanging out aimlessly around Brooklyn bars riding these bikes, so it's only a matter time before everyone gets on them.

Source: NPR (All Things Considered) - Electric Bikes Remove Strain Of Riding

See also:

• Electric Bikes Are Blowing Up and Gadget Lab Readies an e-Bike Test List
  

The company's sending out customer-satisfaction surveys via Medallia, a feedback agent. It asks a broad range of questions, such as whether you've taken in your handset for repair or replacement, whether the iPhone is your first Apple product and whether you're a Mac or Windows user.

This survey comes at good timing, considering the recent, widespread reports complaining about spotty iPhone 3G network performance. Just how large of an issue is the handset's network performance? Once (and if) Apple releases these survey results, we'll have an even better idea.

Meanwhile, if Apple has sent you the survey, feel free to comment about it. We have yet to receive one at Wired.com; we'll keep you posted.

Also see:

• Wired.com's iphone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
  
• Angry iPhone 3G Customer Sues Apple
• Apple: iPhone Update Improves 3G Network Performance
• Video: AT&T Blames iPhone 3G For Network Issues
• Opinion: Firmware Update to Fix iPhone 3G? I Doubt It
• Participate in Wired.com's Global iPhone 3G Study
• What's Wrong With the 3G in iPhone 3G?
• IPhone 3G Users Heated Over Network Issues

Apple Sends Out iPhone 3G Customer Satisfaction Survey [TheiPhoneBlog]

(Screenshot by TheiPhoneBlog)

Asus has quietly launched their latest offering, the Eee Download service, and judging from the initial support and initial response, they should have kept it a little quieter and made sure it was a little further developed before they unveiled it.

See, at first glance its a great idea, the Eee Download service offers the ability to “install software and multimedia in just one click,” which comes courtesy of the Click ‘N Run (CNR) format. If you remember back, CNR comes from Lindows Linspire fame shame, however CNR has since recently been purchased by Xandros.

So that all sounds great, Xandros owns a service and the version of Linux that is installed on the Eee PC’s is Xandros, that sounds like it should be a match made in heaven. However the purchase of CNR is a pretty recent one, and it seems that most of the software is still not actually compatible with Xandros. We can only hope that is something they are working on.

Basically this seems like a great idea, having used CNR before I can attest to its ease of use, and it typically makes Linux a little more friendly for those non-geeks that Asus is trying to attract with the Eee. Its just hard to think that Asus completely jumped the gun on this launch.

Of course keeping in mind that Xandros does make the CNR service a little more Eee-friendly, then users would have the option to (at current) 3,432 software applications and 148 audio and video files. Lets hope they get an updated version rolled out soon.

Read [Eee Download] Via [Eee PC News]

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Filed under: Laptops

HTC had recently followed up the S730 with a newer model, appropriately named the S740.  As you can see, it looks a lot like the Touch Pro mixed with the Touch Diamond. 

It definitely has the makings of a gem with its candybar model with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.  It runs with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard, and has a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. 

Other features include a 3.2-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, GPS, 256 flash memory and 256MB of RAM.  It is set up to run on WCDMA/HSDPA networks, or GSM/GPRS/EDGE. 

The S740 should surface sometime next month in Europe, but there is no word on a price as yet. 

Via [Gizmodo]

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Sixense has spent the last 18 months working on a new 3D input device that could potentially revolutionize the way we use the computer, and will definitely draw comparisons with the Wiimote where gaming is concerned. It relies on realistic movements to control how you interact within the game, but is way more advanced than Nintendo's offering since it is based on precise tracking relative to a base station and will be able to react to movement in six degrees of freedom. The degree of accuracy falls to the nearest millimetre or degree, and is updated once every ten milliseconds. Being highly sensitive, I don't think I will enjoy using this input device since my hands tend to shake by itself a whole lot, so anyone watching me play an FPS will probably suffer from a really bad headache later on. No word on when this input device will be released to the masses though.

Microsoft has supported rumors floating around of a 120GB Zune with the following statement.

You've probably all seen about 120GB @the FCC- and just wanted to send you a note to confirm that is indeed part of the plan. There's definitely more details coming in the way of new software and hardware, pricing etc.

Hmm - new Zune software, check. New Zune pricing, check. New Zune customers? Microsoft might run into some problems there judging by past records.