HP Laserjet P1005 Review

A few weeks ago my ancient HP Laserjet II (20+ years old) expired, so I looked around for a low-cost replacement. The HP P1005 fit the bill - at that time HP was selling them with an on-line rebate which reduced the price to $49.99 with free shipping, less than the cost of one of its print cartridges. At this writing HP's price has gone back up, but Newegg has them for $49.99 plus shipping. Perhaps others do too. At that price, how could it really go wrong?

So far so good. It installed fine on Vista x64 and the LAN-connected Vista and XP computers, despite some confusion on my part caused by the serious lack of documentation, see below.

I've used it for a couple of weeks now. Unlike the old Laserjet II, the P1005 is absolutely silent until called upon to print something. Then if it hasn't printed recently it warms itself up for a few seconds (HP says 8.5) and prints at a rate of up to 15 pages per minute, four seconds per page, and in a quick test it did print a 3-page document in 12 seconds. Some reviewers have complained about the 62 dB noise, but in my low-duty application right next to my desk it hasn't bothered. It won't interrupt conversation. If others were using it frequently, I would place it farther from my desk or at a different computer.

Features:

• Paper: Letter, legal, postcards, transparencies and "tough" (plastic) paper, #10 envelopes, smaller sizes.
• Up to 15 pages per minute, four seconds per page.
• Good black-and-white print quality.
• About 1500 pages per print cartridge, which cost about $50-$60, or 3 to 4 cents per page.
• Input tray 150 sheets, output 100.
• USB 2.0.
• Win 2000, XP, Server 2003 32/64 bit, Vista 32/64, Mac OS X several revs.
• Small and light, 10.3 lb, hence modestly portable.

It does NOT have:

• COLOR. The biggie.
• Its own networking of any kind, except through an attached computer of course. The only connection available is USB 2.0.
• Automatic double-sided printing. It does have manual double-sided printing, sort of, see below.
• Selectable input trays.
• High duty cycle - 1500 pages per month is the recommended max, 5000 absolute max.
• Any printed documentation whatsoever.

Things that are lame:

• Printed Documentation: none. HP has apparently given up on solving the multiple-language problem and just doesn't include any printed material except how to unpack it and how to find your local HP office anywhere in the world. There is a CD-ROM with no instructions on it which, if you play it, gives information on installation. It's a bit obtuse but we got there.
• Manual Double-Side Print: It prints the first side of all pages, then instructs you to re-insert the stack and push the GO button. But on the P1005 there is no GO button or any software button to click - maybe you need a P1006 or P1500 to get that. The workaround is to briefly lift the lid to the printer cartridge and set it back down, after which the backs of the pages will print. But HP doesn't offer that solution - you have to get there by trial and error. They may offer a downloadable fix for the software, but I've checked and not found it.

Despite those minor issues it's a mighty good printer for the price of $50. Probably for the regular price too. It's very suitable for home use or for a small office, but for color you'd need an inkjet as well.

Made in Vietnam.

8 GB RAM

The "new" computer has 4 GB of RAM, which is a lot, but I have disk paging turned off, and Windows Vista has warned me more than once that I was down to 15% of memory remaining. In each instance Googe Earth was running, but I like Google Earth and I'm sure that other applications will come along which can also benefit from gobs of memory. That's the future of computing.

Furthermore, the exact memory that I used for the first 4 GB (G.Skill 4 GB dual channel 800 MHz) now appears to be out of production by G.Skill (technology moves along) and is on sale at NewEgg. It works perfectly and has a Windows Experience Index Subscore of 5.9, the highest possible. So I ordered 4 GB more, which is all that my Intel DP35DP motherboard is rated to handle. Full up.

But I got an unpleasant surprise at boot time. While my nice new home-built computer had routinely booted in about 60 seconds with 4 GB, from power-on to display of the desktop, it now took over three minutes, sometimes almost four. Yikes! Why would that be? Memory test: no problems. Swap new memory with old: same problem with 8GB, no problem with 4 GB. Huh.

Google provided the answer. The Intel DP35DP BIOS had two software bugs, one affecting only boards with 8GB and running in 64-bit mode, and the other affecting boards with 8 GB and no disk in the DVD drive. Either way I had a problem, but either way the fix required only a simple download and "express" installation of updated BIOS. Now it boots up in 60 seconds with 8 GB, as it darn well should, and the Windows Experience Index Subscore for memory is still 5.9.

Before	After

Mozilla Sunbird Calendar Works Great!

Better than Microsoft's Windows Calendar.

Here are my specifications for a good calendar system:

• A nice application window with several views, including day, week, and month;
• Compatible with on-line calendars such as Google Calendar;
• But it must continue to work when there is no internet connection;
• Calendars sharable within my own network;
• Reliable pop-up reminders of calendar events; and
• The same application should work on all of the computers on my network.

After I discovered Windows Calendar on my new Vista 64-bit machine, I set it up with several different calendars, moving all of that information off of an older machine which I then shut down. It sort of worked, and I found it useful, but with these issues:

• It only worked on my Vista machine, not on XP machines, so I couldn't use it to maintain a central calendar accessible from all machines.
• It was unreliable, in two different ways:
  • Reminders did not work unless Windows Calendar was running, regardless of the setting of the option called "Reminders should show when Windows Calendar is not running."
  • Windows Calendar didn't always start when Windows started. That meant that I couldn't depend on reminders, period, because I can't depend on myself to notice whether it's running every time the computer restarts.
• Setting an appointment (event) for later in the current day was quite awkward: As soon as I clicked on New Appointment, I would get an immediate "reminder" because the default time for the reminder was prior to the current time. The reminder had to be dismissed before any other information could be entered into the new appointment. Yuck - don't they ever try their own software?
• After a new event was set up, there was no way to know whether it had been published. No final "save" command or "appointment saved" acknowledgment.
• HELP on Vista Calendar is worthless. Clicking on Help gives one page of instructions for doing those things that are patently obvious anyway. There is no overview, no explanation of the difference between an "appointment" and a "task," no instructions for keeping the calendars in a folder of MY choice (one that will be backed up frequently).

Windows Calendar isn't a bad application, but it isn't good either. It's Microsoft.

A quick Google search produced Mozilla Sunbird, an open-source cross-platform multi-language calendar which runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, and a few other systems. It resolves most of the problems mentioned above:

• It works on both Windows Vista and XP;
• It has been quite reliable so far although, as with Windows Calendar, Sunbird must be running for reminders to work;
• It's much easier to set up a new event, especially on the current day;
• There is no question when the new event has been published.

It does NOT have a help file, however, except an on-line help which works with Mozilla browsers (Firefox) but not with Internet Explorer. The people who do Mozilla must really hate IE! Maybe I'll install Firefox and take a look at that help file someday. And who knows, maybe I'll like Firefox.

Getting Started with Sunbird:

Here is the web page for downloading Mozilla Sunbird. Installation on Windows was uneventful on my systems.

Sunbird supports two kinds of calendar files: (1) Its own internal data base, not accessible from other computers; and (2) iCalendar (.ics) files, a standardized format in which each file is a separate calendar, accessible from other computers if located in a shared folder. Sunbird will create the first kind of calendars, but it will not conveniently create the second kind, unless I've missed something.

I have a main computer (the one I built) and a laptop, and others in my family also have computers, so I needed sharable iCalendar files. Here is how I created all of my calendar files:

• Some of my calendars already existed in Windows Calendar, so I simply "published" those to .ics files in the folder of my choice.
• For the rest, I created an empty file with the extension .ics in a folder of my choice as follows:
  • Right-clicked in that chosen folder, clicked New, then Text Document.
  • Renamed that file "calendarname.ics," where "calendarname" is the name I wished to give that particular calendar. When Windows asked if I really wanted to change the name extension, I answered Yes.
• In Sunbird, I clicked File, then Open Calendar File, then
• Navigated to the file I created, clicked on it, and clicked Open.
• That calendar then appeared in my calendar list, so I added events, and also edited the calendar's properties.
• I actually deleted the default calendar called "Home" because there was no need for it.

Why would anyone want more than one calendar?

Because (1) It may be convenient to organize calendars by topic or activity, e.g. one for taking medicine (daily reminders), a different one for business appointments, and yet another for repeating things that don't change, like birthdays; (2) With several calendars all displayed at once the calendar window may get quite busy, so it may be helpful to be able to temporarily suppress the information from one or more calendars to better view the other calendars; and (3) Some of the calendars that show in my window may belong to someone else, from another computer on the network or from the internet, such as a calendar of US holidays.

Examples of calendars that appear on my Sunbird window:

• Medicine reminders;
• Business and other appointments - anything that may come up;
• Repeating events such as birthdays, backup reminders, tax payments; and
• US Holidays.

To make Sunbird ALWAYS start up minimized at bootup on XP and Vista:

Windows XP:

• Put a shortcut to Sunbird on the desktop so that it will be handy. If there is not a shortcut there already, click the Start button, then go to Programs, then Mozilla Sunbird, RIGHT-click Mozilla Sunbird, drag it to the desktop, and click "copy here."
• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\Documents and Settings, then User (whichever user wants startup at boot), then Start Menu, then Programs, then Startup.
• Move the Sunbird shortcut from the desktop into Startup.
• Right-click the Mozilla Sunbird shortcut, click Properties.
• Change "Run:" from "Normal Window" to "Minimized." Click Apply. Click OK.

Windows Vista:

• Put a shortcut to Sunbird on the desktop so that it will be handy. If there is not a shortcut there already, click the Start button, then go to Programs, then Mozilla Sunbird, RIGHT-click Mozilla Sunbird, drag it to the desktop, and click "copy here."
• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\Users, then User (whichever user wants startup at boot), then AppData, then Microsoft, then Windows, then Start Menu, then Programs, then Startup.
• Move the Sunbird shortcut from the desktop into Startup.
• Right-click the Mozilla Sunbird shortcut, click properties.
• Change "Run:" from "Normal Window" to "Minimized." Click Apply. Click OK.

That will do it - anything in that Startup folder will be started at bootup, and you have told Windows to start it minimized. Reboot and try it out.

Remaining Problems:

Help File: Neither Windows Calendar nor Sunbird has a useful help file built in. If you use the Firefox browser, then you may have a help file for Sunbird - I haven't tried it.

With both calendars, reminders will not work if you close the application. If you use reminders, then DO NOT EVER click on the X in the upper right corner of the window. Minimize the window instead. I hope to find a fix for this issue in Sunbird. I'd also like to move it from the main taskbar to the notification area (system tray), though I think this is a bit beyond my expertise at the moment.

Comments are invited.

Vista Still Sucks

This post is a brief rant about Microsoft and their latest attempt to provide an "operating system" for regular PC users. It's the opinion of one semi-technical user - read it at your own risk.

Vista has been out for over a year and a half now. One major update later (Service pack 1), nothing has changed on my system. Nothing. Every original complaint is still there. I have found workarounds for some, but not all. I don't have the performance problems that so many others complain about for some reason - but then again I have never made the exact comparison by loading XP or Ubuntu on this speedy new home-built hardware. It boots up in seconds. I chose Vista Ultimate 64 because it supports 64-bit addressing, allowing more RAM memory, which (as always) is the future of computing. But that's the best I can say for Vista.

Microsoft has always been a paragon of mediocrity in the technical arena. I have not been exposed to anything that they have done with excellence, ever, except marketing. They have, of course, applied their marketing muscle with skill, arrogance, and disdain to force their inferior products into markets where excellent products already existed, to the detriment of the customer and certainly to the companies offering the superior products. Vista may yet be another Microsoft marketing success but, so far, it's a technical flop.

A few of my specific complaints:

• Vista forgets folder settings. This is a well-documented bug which doesn't seem to appear on all systems, but I sure have it. Just now, for example, I opened my Contacts folder to find that it had been reset to a folder type of "all items," (the default) rather than a folder type of "contacts." Because of this, the contacts were not sorted in any useful way. This happens to all folders, even the recycle bin. I set things back as they should be, but I know that they won't be that way after the next reboot. Here is a web site that offers a fix, but in my experience the fix lasts for only a few days to a few weeks.
• Vista is unstable. Several times now Vista has failed catastrophically, something that never happened on Windows XP. Most recently I had almost finished a fairly complex email, and suddenly the create-mail window froze. I could still perform a few windows functions, but every application which was dependent on explorer.exe was stuck. That's a lot of applications, and apparently the "create mail" function in Windows Mail is one of them. Reason enough to use a different mail client, I guess. I lost my work.
• HELP is AWFUL!!! What on earth are they thinking? If you ask for help from within an application, you will get an unordered list of things that might help. But if you try to change or narrow the search you will get Google-like results from the entire universe of Microsoft products, most having little or nothing to do with the application you are using. It's useless. Actually, Google on the web is much better! What happened to an application-specific help facilitiy with a table of contents, index, and word search? The new help must save cost for Microsoft, but it's very little help and another example of technical mediocrity, in this case very deliberate.

There is so much more, but this will do for now. What's the point of complaining - I don't get any warm feelings that Microsoft ever listens.

I wish I had the courage (and time) to just switch to Linux.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1

No problems.

Unlike the service packs for Windows XP, Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an AUTOMATIC install. That means if you have Windows Update set to perform updates automatically, SP1 will be installed whether you choose it or not. That almost happened to me today, but I was able to delay it until I could do a disk-image backup. See a previous post "RAID Backup" about that process.

Then I allowed the update to proceed. This computer is a medium-high-end system with dual 2.7 GHz processors, RAID 1 SATA disks, 4 Gb of memory, and Vista Ultimate 64-bit. The update took 27 minutes, from start until I was logged on again. It rebooted once during the install.

I have so far discovered no problems at all. I've tried lots of applications, including IE, Word, WordPerfect, Windows Media Center, anti-virus, graphics editors, and many more. SP1 has been running for only a few hours, but so far so good.

Here are some possible improvements:

• Microsoft says it's a little faster, and it does seem a little more lively, though this computer was pretty quick before, and
• Before the update, memory usage tended to build up throughout the day until it reached 55 or 60%. Now it seems to sit at about 35%, going up or down slightly as applications are opened and closed.

That's all I have noticed, and those are just perceptions, not measurements. Here are some annoying Vista "features" that have NOT improved:

• The select zone that extends all the way across the main window of Windows Explorer instead of being limited to the file name,
• Windows Calendar reminders still don't work if Windows Calendar is closed, even though I have selected the option that should make reminders work,
• Windows Task Manager still asks for permission to continue, when I ask it to display all running processes, even though I'm logged on as Administrator, and
• All of the other Vista annoyances.

After the update was completed, a popup asked whether or not I would like to contribute to the "Windows Customer Experience." This was a click YES or NO, with a "read more" link. I clicked on "read more" and was taken to a very obtuse page about personal information and Microsoft's use thereof; that page had nothing to say about Windows Customer Experience. I opted out, of course. Why contribute when they won't even tell us what it's about?

Nevertheless, bottom line, SP1 works fine here, or at least as well as Vista worked before. I'll install it on another computer without a qualm. On the other hand, if I were managing an enterprise network I'd do a lot more investigation before installing.

Desktop iCalendar Lite

Cute but buggy. Almost a product.

I love the look of this cute little calendar. Windows Vista now comes with an almost-competent calendar called, not surprisingly, Windows Calendar. It has its own set of bugs, but it almost works well enough. In particular, it can subscribe to calendars in ICAL (.ics) format which are on the web or on the local network, and it can also publish a calendar in that format locally or on the web.

Since I have two computers, it's convenient to maintain the calendar on the Vista desktop and have the XP laptop "subscribe" to that calendar. Unfortunately, though, Windows Calendar does not run on the laptop, and the Microsoft calendar that IS on the laptop is not compatible with the ICAL format. So a search ensued for a compatible calendar that will run on XP, preferably a free one.

Desktop iCalendar Lite was released less than two weeks ago, and seems to have all of the features that I want. Best of all, it's free. I've installed it on both computers, and it seems to work exactly the same on Vista x64 as it does on XP x32.

What I like the MOST is the cool appearance. The screenshot shows the desktop of the XP laptop computer, with the calendar in the upper right-hand corner on top of a busy desktop theme (breakfast!). It shows even more clearly against the black background that I normally use. This is a transparent "skin" (appearance), which I especially like, but the calendar also has opaque skins of various motifs and colors. The text size, placement, and colors are almost completely adjustable. Days with scheduled appointments or tasks are in color, while days without are white. Hover the mouse over any day, and up pops a little window showing the events of that day. On both of my computers I have told iCalendar Lite to subscribe to the calendars published by Windows Calendar on the Vista desktop computer, and that part seems to work.

Here is a list of installation issues:

• On initial startup, an error appeared with a US Holidays problem. This was solved by adding a new US Holidays calendar from Google Public Calendars, then deleting one of the US Calendar entries.
• HELP did not work, either from the program (right-click and Help) or from the HELP shortcut in Start Menu. This was solved by renaming the file Desktop iCal Lite.chm to Help.chm. Now it works from both locations.
• The calendar kept prompting me for a Google username and password, even though I do not use Google Calendar. I set up a dummy Google Calendar and eventually the problem went away, though I think a reboot was part of the solution.
• Initially when I clicked on the "setting" function, the program reported an illegal integer value. That problem eventually went away.
• The hourly time announcement is optional. If you select it, the default sound file is in the folder c:\WINNT\Media, which folder does not exist on either XP or Vista. I changed the default to point to a file in c:\Windows\Media and then it worked.
• It has a setting called "Run the program at start up." If this is NOT checked, iCalendar nevertheless runs at startup anyway. I deleted the offending registry entry, which was disclosed in MSCONFIG, and that issue went away.

Ongoing issues:

• The HELP file discusses a "weather" function, which does not seem to exist in this "lite" version of the program. In addition, the HELP file is very, very skimpy.
• IMPORTANT: The REMINDER function does not seem to work properly. For example, if the reminder is for 5:00 pm iCalendar may or may not chime at that time. Further, it may show a popup at the correct time, or perhaps later, and the popup seems to disappear almost instantly. I can live with the other bugs, but this one is serious. If you set a reminder, you need to be confident that you will GET the reminder at the set time, not one minute sooner or later.

Windows Calendar has this same failing, by the way. It has a setting in Options labeled "Reminder should show when Windows Calendar is not running." But the reminder doesn't always appear, even with that setting checked. I think it always works if Windows Calendar is minimized, but of course that unnecessarily consumes taskbar space.

Rant: I've had a calendar with reminders working on a real-time computer (HP 1000) for over 20 years. I wrote it myself; it's NOT difficult! Is this a problem with Windows, or did two different calendar authors both screw up? Either way, Microsoft certainly screwed up. Why is Microsoft always such a paragon of mediocrity? Heaven knows they have enough money to do the job right the first time if they care to.

The non-Microsoft author might be excused, but not Microsoft for Heaven's sake. If they're going to act like the big boys they should do the job right, but somehow I doubt they ever will. End of rant.

Perhaps the solution to the buggy iCalendar is to try the "full" version; it's only $20 if it works, otherwise nothing. I like the look so much, I'll probably do that. I hope it has a simple digital clock too; I'd like to move that off the taskbar.

Still no response of any kind from Brigadoon Software, by the way. See previous post.

PCPhoneHome Does Not Call Back

Update 2009 Sep 28: Do It Yourself PC Phone Home

Update: I left three separate tech service requests with Brigadoon Software, the makers of PCPhoneHome, two by email and one by telephone. The most-recent of those, the phone call, was five days ago and the oldest was more than a week ago. I have received no response yet.

It's my current opinion that PCPhoneHome is an orphan - nobody home at Brigadoon Software. So what if my PC was stolen and it did phone home? I seriously doubt I would get any help tracing it. Apparently it's still possible to order the product, but I won't!

Now the problem is that it's still phoning home, from my home, every day at least twice. Brigadoon's documentation implies that it is nearly impossible to uninstall it without their help, and they don't call back. Since PCPhoneHome puts other "hooks" into the operating system, I think I will try to uninstall it anyway before the trial period expires.