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Houston We Have a Problem... 046 04/08/07
Missing Ink
I have an excellent Epson Stylus Photo printer that I used to use
mainly for printing photographs. This has changed now so that most of my printing
is in the form of letters etc. for which I only need black ink. In the
printer’s utility software there is a facility for the use of black ink so I
click on that option. But I note that it is not only the black ink that is
going down, it is using up colour ink as well. Is there anything I can do about
this as it so wasteful?
Dennis Coote, by email
I wouldn't pay too much attention to the ink level indicator, it’s
only an estimate and on some models the tanks can still be up to a third full
when the gauge reads empty. Even though you’ve selected black-only printing
some colour ink will be used every time the printer goes through it's start-up
routine. Cleaning cycles also use up a lot of ink. Nevertheless, the colour
tanks probably contain much more ink than the level indicators suggest. A free
utility called SSC (http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml)
has a more accurate ‘fuel gauge’; this also has the facility to ‘reset’ the
chips on the cartridges so you can use a good quality third-party refill ink
kit, which will also help keep costs down. Needless to say printer
manufacturers frown upon this practice and it almost certainly invalidates the
warranty but if it has run out you have nothing to lose.
RAMs for
MACs?
I'm a Derby County fan now living in Devon so I can't receive
Radio Derby. The ‘Rams’ web site offers live
commentary for a small fee but only supports Windows whereas I
have an iMac. Any solution?
Dennis Carlow, by email
I think you have overlooked the simplest solution and that is to
listen to match reports and commentary on Radio Derby. It’s available from the
BBC on the Internet (http://tinyurl.com/2jgdcs), using Real
Player (or Real Alternative, http://tinyurl.com/2m8jcr) and it works on
Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix operating systems. Derby FC’s web service contains
digital rights management (DRM) data to protect copyright and this can only be
played through Windows Media Player (v9 or above), which is why it’s not
Mac-friendly now, or likely to be anytime soon.
Identities in Windows Mail
I have an Acer Aspire laptop
with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition pre-installed, which includes Internet
Explorer 7. Rather than use Windows
Mail which comes with Vista, (and which, unlike Outlook Express, does not
support multiple Identities), I wish to install Outlook Express or an Outlook
Express-compatible e-mail client (i.e. one to which folders and messages from
an OE store can be imported) which supports multiple identities. Any ideas on
how to install OE on Vista, or suggestions as to alternative e-mail clients
with these features?
Guy Catchpole
Unfortunately you cannot
install Outlook Express in Vista, and many have tried… As you have discovered
Windows Mail in Vista doesn't support switchable identities in a single
instance of the program but you can still create separate identities by
opening extra Vista user accounts. However, there is another way and a third-party
utility for Windows Mail, called WMID (Windows Mail Identities, http://tinyurl.com/35op74) installs this
handy feature back and it costs just $15. The alternative is to switch to
Mozilla Thunderbird, (http://tinyurl.com/yvbygu),
it supports multiple identities that can be switched on the fly; it looks and
works a lot like OE and best of all, it is free.
Getting Off the Grid
When I launch Microsoft Word it opens up with a page filled with a
graph, though I can still type on the page. How can I get rid of the lines,
it’s obviously not normal as this doesn’t happen on my laptop.
Eddie Rigby, by email
You are right, it’s not something you see very often and you have
managed to enable an obscure feature called ‘Gridlines’. It’s quite well hidden
on older versions of Word and quite difficult to do by accident… To switch it
off on recent editions of Word go to the View menu, select Show/Hide and
uncheck Gridlines. On Word 2002 and earlier right-click on the main toolbar,
check Drawing, go to the Draw menu select Grid, uncheck 'Display gridlines on screen' and click OK.
Mystery
Error
I have a full set
of anti-virus and security applications on my PC yet I have begun to get the
following troubling notice on my desktop: ‘iexplore.exe-
application error, Software exception (0xDeeDFade)…’. Is it dangerous and what
does it mean.
Peter Green, by
email
You can relax; it almost certainly isn’t a virus or anything nasty
like that. The two clues as to its meaning are in the header ‘iexplore.exe –
application error’, and the ‘0xDeeDFade’ code, both of which point to a problem
in a third party ‘extension’ or add-on installed in Internet Explorer. It’s
impossible to say which one is causing the problem from the error message but
you can easily find out by going to Tools > Manage Add-Ons. Highlight each
entry in turn and click Disable then OK. Exit and restart Internet Explorer
then enable them one at a time until you find the culprit.
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© R. Maybury 2007 1607
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