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Welcome to our monthly round-up of tech tips, news
and web wisdom.
If you have any questions you’d like us to address,
please contact us at web@etccomputerland.com. |
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OEM
vs Refill
 Chris Stegner
Service
Manager
Toner
cartridges are expensive. Every time one runs out it
can feel like a right hook to the pocket book. This
expense can make it very attractive to seek out lower
cost alternatives, refilled cartridges. These refilled
cartridges can be as much as 50% less expensive than
the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) cartridges
that ETC ComputerLand recommends. But, they can end
up costing a company many hundreds of dollars in repair
or replacements costs.
It is true that not all refill toner cartridges are
defective. Most work reasonably well. But, every week
or two the technicians at ETC ComputerLand receive
a call from a client who is having problems with their
printer that can be directly tied back to malfunctioning
refilled toner cartridges.
There are many different problems that surface with
third-party toners. First, we generally see fewer pages
per cartridge with refilled product. Secondly, there
are additional parts within a toner cartridge that
wear out during use. These parts are not always replaced
by a refurbishing company and can cause lower quality
printing, shadowing (faint images left on the page)
or even cause the toner to die before it is out of
powder. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we see
toner leaks. This is when the cartridge dumps the toner
it contains directly into the printer. This causes
an awful mess inside the printer that can take a long
time to clean out and can permanently ruin the printer.
Please don’t let this happen to you.
Even with the $150.00 HP OEM toner cartridge, the
average cost per page only ranges between .01 and .08
cents per page, depending on if you are printing words
or pictures for most HP printers.
Our Sales staff can set up a customized ordering portal,
using our EOS program, conveniently allowing companies
to order an OEM toner cartridge for their specific
printers in their building.
Learn more about EOS and check out our demo.
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Backup Backup Backup
 Rhonda Primm
Kirksville Branch Manager
DO YOU BACKUP YOUR DATA? If you don’t, you may
be in for a rude awakening someday. It amazes me the
number of customers who walk-through our doors who
don’t backup their data.
I can tell you about my own experience a few years
ago. My daughter was playing a game on my laptop and
she called out, “the screen went black.” I
asked her to find something else to do and I would
look at it later. A couple of days later I turned the
laptop on and it wouldn’t boot. After further
testing, the boot sector of the hard drive had failed.
I tried several different ways to access the hard drive.
To no avail, the drive was dead with only expensive
options to try and with no guarantee the data could
be recovered. Lucky for me, I didn’t have but
some family photos that were lost.
Data can be lost due to other factors other than hardware
failure. A few examples are: a virus, power surge/failure,
bad sectors on a hard drive and data corruption. Establishing
a proper data backup process is the key to making sure
your data is protected.
There are many options to choose from when it comes
to backing up your data. Some of the options are: external
hard drive, thumb drives, backup software with hardware,
online backup, multiple hard drives in your computer,
which allows for redundancy, (RAID, Redundant Array
of Independent Disks) and burning of CD or DVD.
Then there is of course the question of full backup,
incremental or differential. A full backup is just
what it states. It backs up your entire system for
complete data recovery. Incremental will backup anything
that has changed since the last full backup including
changes made multiple times. Differential backup also
backs up data that has changed since the last full
backup but only backs up the latest version of that
file. You will want to choose the combination that
best suits your needs. One last thing, you should also
perform a small recovery of data regularly to verify
you backup is working properly.
DATA RECOVERY IS ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR BACKUP STRATEGY.
Call our Sales team or technician if you are unsure
of the strategy you should use. Good luck and don’t
wait, backup today. |
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What
is “social media” and do I care?
 Dean La Velle
Web Services Consultant
I’m kind of old, not a gadget guy, and a bit
cranky. So when after ten years working professionally
on the Web I found myself investigating social media
for one of our clients I was skeptical.
How were these social media sites different from regular
websites? Was this all just hype? And how would it
help my client make more money?
First things first: let’s define social
media. It’s websites that encourage sharing
and discussing information on the Web, or in geek-speak “based
on user-participation and user-generated content.”
The biggest names in social media are MySpace, Facebook,
YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Silly names, oh why
the silly names?
So what did I find?
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MySpace is for kids, bands, and celebrities. Not
much business utility.
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Facebook is great if you love keeping up with
relatives and long-lost friends… on a daily
basis. It does have value, as you can have users
share links to content from your site on their
Facebook page
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YouTube, to my surprise, has incredible value
for businesses. With broadband becoming the norm,
video has become a natural way to explain industrial
processes; for a CEO to talk to investors or employees;
to showcase new products or services; to SHOW instead
of TELL.
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LinkedIn is the business-world version of Facebook.
After a rocky start, it’s beginning to gain
traction. It’s valuable, yet still unproven.
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Twitter - this was the one I most didn’t
want to like. Goofy name, and just plain weird – you
can only post a message 140 characters long (exactly
the length of the previous two sentences) – who
needs that? You do. Twitter has huge potential
as a marketing tool, internal communications platform
and customer service channel. It is more versatile
than it seems and more powerful than you’d
imagine.
Watch for our Social Media White Paper soon. In it
we’ll cover all of these social media sites and
more.
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Congratulations
Young Life Quincy!
 As
many of you may already know, GiFT is a monthly computer
and technology giveaway sponsored by ETC ComputerLand
to benefit local not-for-profit tax-exempt agencies
who are in good standing with the state of Illinois
and/or Missouri and whose principal offices are within
30 miles of Quincy, IL, and Kirksville, MO.
Click
here for instructions on setting up a monthly reminder
to sign up for GiFT.
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