I first bought this printer in 2000, for $500. It’s still a great photo printer, with vibrant colors, great paper support (borderless on some sizes up to 13″x19″), pretty fast, and very high resolution.
Today, I noticed that Amazon has it for $360 plus a $100 rebate. At this price, I think this is an outstanding deal.
It was just impossible for me to sit up straight in my old chair, which had no back support at all. I knew it had to be replaced when I found myself adjusting the center post every 20 minutes. I hate most office chairs - they’re not tall enough, and they have the wrong kinds of adjustments. I like the Aerons and Mirras, but they’re pretty expensive, even used.
This chair is a pretty good compromise - not too expensive, tall (it’s the only chair I could find that I could sit in comfortable at less than the maximum height), and with a good lumbar support.
Plus, it’s on sale this week and staples.com has free delivery.
The Kensington Expert Mouse is BY FAR the best alternate pointer I’ve used for general tasks. I’ve owned some variation of it since it was first released in (I think) 1986, when I got one to use with my Apple IIgs. Back then, it was just a block with cue ball in it and two rectangular buttons. The design has, over a few iterations, evolved to become more vaguely breast-like, so it fits comfortably in the hand. I think I’ve gone through about twelve of them over the years, mostly replaced because of the release of a better design (only one model - the Expert Mouse Pro - has broken, and they were very good about just replacing them when that happened). It’s very precise (great for games), and if you suffer from any sort of wrist soreness, as I do on occasion, it may help you. (As always, if you have symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetetive stress injury, see a doctor.)
I wasn’t so convinced about the latest addition - the scroll ring around the ball - but after using it for a day or so, I quickly became accustomed to it, and I now find regular scroll wheels a little unnatural and strange. The other buttons are arranged nicely. I use the tip of my forefinger and middle finger together to move the ball. I use my ring finger to move the wheel with my thumb as a guide and picking up the slack when I reach the end of the range of a
particular motion. So basically, your fingers lie over the whole surface of the mouse. I use my thumb and pinky on the left and right buttons, and extend my index and ring fingers for the top two buttons.
I found that the included wrist rest wasn’t quite high enough, and I added another gel pad on top of it. That’s personal opinion though.
The driver software for Windows is very very very customizable, but if you use an alternate OS, it will still work fine - it’s standard MS mouse compatible. I have one on my linux desktop, and it’s great.
There are better pointing devices for different purposes (like a tablet for drawing), but this is my favorite general one.
This is a great workhorse laser printer. I’m continually astonished by how cheap these things have become, and particularly with the price pressure that Brother’s been putting on the market lately.
This printer is fast and capable. I LOVE printing full duplex 4-up. It saves a lot of paper, and I find that it’s much easier to read long articles that way. The toner seems to last a long time, and there’s a straight-feed paper path for printing envelopes and cardstock. It has a postscript emulation mode, so you’ll always be able to find drivers for it. The Windows driver, in particular, has a number of very nice options for different layouts (including an automatic double-sided book layout from standard letter pages).
The only drawback I’ve found is that it’s exactly the right shape for my cat to want to sit in it, which results in errant cat hair on printed documents. Very occasionally, he’ll hit the button on the top, which will wake the printer up, and very rarely print another copy of the last document. This is a minor irritation. Other than that, no complaints. It’s quiet, it’s fast, and the quality is very good.