Last Sunday, a huge lightning strike hit my yard. About a hundredth of a second later, BOOM! Thunder! I went to the office. Computer still running. But no internet.?ÿ
It blew up the modem.?ÿ
It blew up a card on my computer, that allowed it to hook to the modem.?ÿ
Then, I tried to print. Both printers are dead.
I had a up t-120 wide printer. 24" wide paper path.
And a hp 1220 printer. 12" wide paper path.
Now, HP is re writing their software, so that before a printer will print, it has a checklist. Does it have a print head installed? Is it genuine HP? If not, give error code. If so, it it out of date? (We don't want this customer to get a smudged print!)
On and on. So that you MUST use oem print cartridges, and the cartridge must be within date.
And, since it is hooked to the internet, HP can check up on you. If you have figured out how to fool their system, and refill a cartridge, then their software figures it out, and blocks a print.
Now, I'm a surveyor. I use about 1000' of 2' wide paper a year. Not alot of ink. I draw worksheets. No fully ink covered pages. A few, yes. But not alot.
The replacement for the T-120 is called a T-210. The T-120 is discontinued. I'd guess it's because the users have figured out how to foil the "OEM ink in date only" system. They don't make much off printers. Its the ink.
I was thinking of getting a Brother all-in-one, printer. Scanner-Printer and another wide format HP.
It looks like WiFi printers are coming along. If I'd had WiFi printers, lightning probably would not have gotten them.
It's kind of like Carlson getting in on the device market, such as total stations and robots. And deleting the other brands, so that they won't run their proprietary gear.
This whole trend of blocking users from mixing gear, and using what they like is a form of antagonism.
Now, it's not TOTALLY carlson's fault. Trimble is a world leader in harsh competitive practices. Trimble lied for years about the functionality of GLONASS, until they finally figured out how to use GLONASS. Then they said "we did it right". That's why it took longer. (That's my opinion.) I don't doubt that Trimble does not want anybody else to do anything, without them. And they probably don't want anybody else to make drivers to run their gear.
Anyway, I need a bit of advice on these printers. I'm thinking of a Brother all in one, and a HP wide one. I gotta get some here soon. Like, going to office depot today.
O, and it blew up my old laptop computer too. It's all a bad excuse to replace stuff. I don't like Windows 10.
Too demanding and intrusive.
I don't want the development team at Microsoft, to see it's a kid, at the computer, and put on a Disney infomercial.
Or to look at the lines on my face and say, "he's gotta go pee", before I even figure it out! (Cameras built into the screen)?ÿ
I've never had a Lightning strike so close. But it didn't get any of us.
Maybe someday, a surveyor will come in from the field, and the sniff sensors in the printer will provide a popup, o, the computer screen, "go take a bath".
Ho boy! All I wanted was to see how much that inverse was, before I got a shower!
Nate
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What, no surge protection?
Oh man, that's harsh!?ÿ Back when I was a kid we had one of those big ol' satellite dishes in the yard and we had lightning hit it and blew out damn near every thing connected to electricity in the house.?ÿ I was crushed that it got my prized stereo with dual cassette with record player.?ÿ I'd like to find me one of those again.
Nate - sorry to hear you got zapped!
We were hit about 15 years ago.?ÿ At first, it did not seem that bad, but a friend suggested we have an electrician check things out, and it turned out there was damage we did not initially notice.?ÿ You could be different, but like all situations, it depends.
Good luck.
Ken
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A couple weeks ago, a bolt of lighting hit 400'-800' away from my house. We lost internet and TV service for an hour before I figured out that the circuit our Verizon service box was plugged into is protected by a GFCI circuit breaker. The stray voltage from the lightning strike was just enough to trip the ground fault protection circuit. Happily, we had no damage to any of our electronics.
I resisted Windows 10 as long as I could. Now that I have it, and gotten used to it, I like it. It boots up way faster than Win 7. It took about a week for the system to calm down with it's pesky inquiries about "I can do this for you...?" or "Would you like to do that...?" Once we got past all the stupid crap settings, I was able to work without annoying interruptions. For what it's worth, I don't use a Microsoft Account on either my work or home computers, for the same privacy reasons you indicated, Nate. And I block my camera when I'm not using it.
You mentioned Brother printers. They play the game, too.?ÿ I bought one of their bottom-of-line laser printers several years ago and have been happy with it after I figured out a couple tricks.
First, it started nagging me to buy a spare toner cartridge when it was maybe halfway through one. I found the optical sensor and covered it with black electrical tape to shut it up.
Then it refused to print after some number of pages, saying the cartridge was used up and they wanted to assure print quality. Quality was still fine. I learned how to take out two screws from the cartridge that hold plastic gears, and reset the gears to factory position. It's tricky to get the spring back in position. After this, it will print another team or two before the prints start to look streaked.
Eventually i wore out the cylinder and/or something else. I had picked up another similar model at a garage sale, and it's a simple drop-in swap of that assembly that took 30 seconds, so it's still running.
Nate - is there a way with the HP T120 24? roll format plotter to reload the used up HP cartridges with more ink? I know it always recognizes if they??re genuine HP cartridges but it is connected via wifi in my office so I am not sure if the cartridges are serialized or not?
I am very happy with my Brother MFC-6490CW. ?ÿIt is many years old now. ?ÿTakes cheap ink, too.
@ncsudirtman there are high volume after market ways to run gallons of ink through the T-120. Some folks do it. Remote ink supplies. I'm not a high volume user about 10-50 pages per month, on the wide printer. Its enough to keep from drying out, but not enough to want a high volume system.
Don't know anything about lasers, but I have a Brother inkjet all-in-one (11 x 17 max) that has been pretty reliable since 2013, and quite economical with ink. No complaints about the print quality either.
In shopping for printers I looked at the ink cartridge yield, then divided that into the cartridge price. The Brother's cost per page was half or a third of some of the competitors, such as HP. The yield information is usually somewhere on the manufacturer's website, though it can take a search to find it.
There will be yield information for toner cartridges as well. There is a set of standard test pages (ISO/IEC 24711 for ink cartridges and ISO/IEC 19752 and 19798 for toner cartridges, as of 2013). In testing the yield, they print the standard pages until the ink/toner is exhausted, and then record the page count.
nd I block my camera when I'm not using it.
Yes, sitting at the computer... Real or imagery tick crawling in the nether regions. Naw, nobody needs to be snooping.
Nate
Real or imagery tick crawling in the nether regions.
I bet you ??always? feel a tick crawling around, at least in your mind.
Had a similar experience to Nate's two years ago.?ÿ Now I use a Wi-Fi connection to the computer and also to the printer.?ÿ No ethernet cable or other cable involved. Had to learn this the hard way.
Well, I found out office depot is out of them.
I ordered a 11x17 brother all in one color inkjet printer.
Scan print fax. With shipping, and tax, a few below 300$.
Next week.....?ÿ
It's a printer I've intended to get.?ÿ
Thanks everyone.
Wide t-120 printer might wait. I think I'll get the kids to take this one apart, searching for fried parts. Boards are available for it. Never know. Might even fix it!
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I know it's too late, after the fact but, these Tripp Lite surge protectors had gotten good ratings.
I lost two cheap laptops to the same thing.
I'm not sure how many ipod users there are (or were) there are in this crowd, but that was my first real run in with the proprietary bs. For those that don't know ipods wouldn't play songs that weren't purchased on itunes. They eventually caved and let any .mp3 work on ipods but it still left a bad taste with me. It's still one of the reasons I'll never buy another apple product.?ÿ
No surge protector will protect from a lightning strike.?ÿ That doesn't mean they're a bad idea, they just protect from surges on the normal AC grid.?ÿ Best protection from lightning??ÿ Disconnect everything during lightning storms.
Tru dat.
I was doing pro audio work for a while and learned that it's important to have a real electrician do the connection for the sub contractors.
Someone who is in a hurry which I don't even know who the name of the person was cuz it doesn't really matter but they forgot that in a 480 circuit you have two live legs and forgot with whatever hurry they were in that they connected both legs and instantaneously the rig that got plugged into that junction box blew up and the best part about it was The surge protection system that was mounted in the box which had I think 30 amp circuits in it burned in place and everything else burned up in it and the breakers never even snapped open.
Yeah lightning is a hell of a lot bigger than a 480 circuit so yeah nothing survives a direct shot but it does help to condition the power a little bit.
Disconnect everything during lightning storms.
This was SOP, in Nebraska.
Don't see much lightening in Puyallup. Not sure anyone out here understands this concept...
I was in one those rare lightning and thunder storms in Portland the year I got married.
Yeah was very weird to say the least.
An omen if you will.
The bat flying around in the house the morning of the day clinched it.
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