Inkjet vs. laser, Chrome password checker, streaming radio

Inkjet vs. lasers

You're probably tired of your printer telling you it's out of black, magenta, yellow, or cyan ink. And you're also probably tired of paying the high price of printer cartridges. And once the insatiable thirst for ink is fixed, your inkjet printer is slow, too. Wouldn't it be great if there were some other way to print out stuff at home?

The next time your printer tells you it's out of ink, or the print head wears out or gets clogged up, or it won't pick up the paper anymore, consider replacing it with a laser printer.

Inkjet printers use ink stored in cartridges. Ink cartridges don't last very long and can dry up if you don't print often. Laser printers use a toner cartridge instead of an ink cartridge. Toner is a mixture of granulated plastic and carbon, so it can't dry out. A laser printer prints a page by melting the toner and bonding it to a page using a fuser assembly.

Toner cartridges do cost more than ink cartridges but can print many more pages. How many more? A typical ink cartridge prints 300 pages or so while a toner cartridge can print a few thousand pages. And your page comes out of the printer nice and warm, too.

If you've worked in an office in the last 20 years, you're probably thinking of the big, expensive laser printers of the day. Forget about those dinosaurs. Basic home laser printers can be smaller than that inkjet printer you have and cost about $100. If you need scanning and copying, the cost might be $200.

Laser printers are fast, too. Most inkjet printers print about nine pages a minute while laser printers print more than 30 pages a minute.

The only drawback to laser printers might be that they're black and white only. Yes, there are color laser printers out there, but you have to buy four toner cartridges instead of one, and I bet you don't really need to print in color that often.

What do you do if you do need to print out a color photo? Instead of replacing empty or dried out ink cartridges, it's easier to head down to Witts or Walgreens and have it printed there.

And no, I don't sell laser printers. But I do have one.

Streaming radio stations on your PC

Maybe you've recently moved to Tehachapi, or maybe you've gotten a sweet gig where you can work from home, or maybe you've recently retired. Whatever your reason is, you miss the radio station you used to listen to in the car.

Maybe you've tried going to the web page for the station and found that most of the sites are terrible. Almost like they know how to do radio but not the internet, right?

Instead, try Odio. It's a free app and works on Windows or Mac computers (sorry, no Android or iOS support.)

The app is completely free and lets you listen to your old radio station almost like you were back in the car during that 17-mile, 90-minute commute.

If you think you might like to branch out a little, Odio offers radio stations from more than 200 countries. Just open the app and click on "Countries." You can also browse stations by language and tags. All of that and it's fast, too.

Here's the link to download Odio if you'd like to try it out:

http://www.odio.io.

If your station isn't listed anywhere, you can request it on this page:

http://www.radio-browser.info/gui/#!/.

All too often...

A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the "jammed" paper tray and the blinking red light.

Do you have a computer or technology question? Greg Cunningham has been providing Tehachapi with on-site PC and network services since 2007. Email Greg at [email protected].