Monthly Archives: February 2016

Shame on you, Epson

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A familiar adage asserts that Gillette doesn’t make its money selling razors; rather, it’s the razor blades that generate the big bucks. You need only check the price of a package of razors (which can go for more than $5/blade) to confirm the wisdom of this observation.

This business model is not limited to razors. If you own an inkjet printer, you’ve assuredly seen the same principle in action  — via the cost of replacement ink. But the situation with these printers is actually worse. Much worse.

You can purchase a decent inkjet printer for less than $100. You may even get one for free (as part of a package deal when you buy a computer). Move up to the $200 range and you can get a truly outstanding inkjet. Take my Epson WF-4630 — please! Amazon currently lists it for $250 dollars, although I have seen it on sale for as little as $150. This is a massive 46 pound all-in-one printer. Capable of handling heavy-duty tasks in ”busy workgroups,” it’s built to last. It’s also built to drain your wallet.

A replacement package of the four (4) ink cartridges for this printer can set you back around $100! In other words, replacing the cartridges just two times will cost more than you likely paid for the printer (which included a set of ink cartridges)! And these cartridges don’t last that long. If you use the printer regularly, you can easily expect to need two or more replacements in a year. Looked at another way, if you are content with a low-cost printer, it can be a smarter move to buy a new printer every time it runs out of ink, rather than ever purchase replacement cartridges. Absurd.

As I said, this is a familiar lament. It’s a Faustian bargain we make when we buy one of these printers. We accept the absurd cost of the ink for the convenience of being able to print photos at home.

But here’s where it gets worse. Epson (and, to a similar extent, all inkjet printer manufacturers) design their hardware in a way that could easily force you to trash a perfectly good printer and buy another one, even if you would prefer not to.

I doubt that this is a deliberate strategy on Epson’s part. If so, it’s a risky one, as you may buy a different brand of printer next time around. More likely, it’s the inevitable fallout of gross indifference to its users.

For me, this realization began when I attempted to print out a greeting card a few weeks ago. The printout contained a series of yellow streaks where red should have been. According to the printer’s User’s Guide, the first step in dealing with this mishap is to perform a nozzle check. This prints out a pattern that will show if any of the ink cartridges is not functioning properly.

Sure enough, my check revealed a partial failure of the Magenta cartridge (by the way, forum postings suggest this printer has more problems with Magenta than other colors for some unknown reason; but that’s another story).

Having confirmed the cause of the failed printouts, Epson’s next recommendation is to do a head cleaning. If this works, it unclogs the affected nozzle(s). There’s no manual labor required. All you do is click an on-screen button. The printer takes over and does the rest. If one head cleaning doesn’t resolve the issue, Epson recommends repeating the procedure for up to a maximum of four times. You may then wait six hours and try yet another cleaning.

Epson alludes to the fact that a head cleaning will “consume some ink.” However, this hardly does justice to how much ink gets wasted by this process. In my case, I wound up trying three cleanings. By the end, all of the printer’s ink cartridges had gone from nearly full to nearly empty. In other words, this potential fix had now cost me $100! The kicker? It didn’t work. Not a bit. Printouts were just as bad as when I started. I was $100 in the hole and still had a failed printer. To continue with more cleanings, I would have had to buy and mostly use up a new set of cartridges — with no guarantee of success. I decided not to go further down this likely fruitless path.

This type of “uncleanable” clog can happen for a number of reasons, including not using use the printer often enough — thereby allowing dried ink to “solidify” in the printhead. Regardless, it had happened to me. What to do now?

At this point, the Epson User Guide ran out of advice. So I turned to the web for further assistance. I already knew that, if a printer’s automated head cleaning failed, a clogged printhead might be rescued by a manual cleaning. The question was how exactly to do this for my printer. The basic idea is to lift the printer cover, locate the printhead and use a cloth (dampened with cleaner fluid or perhaps some diluted isopropyl alcohol) to eliminate the clog. The problem is that exact procedures vary by printer brand and model. What works for one printer may be completely irrelevant for another model. Further, whatever the correct procedure is, it likely won’t be obvious or simple. That’s why you’ll want to refer to a YouTube video for guidance.

I found several such videos for various Epson printers — one even described a problem specifically with Magenta (just as I had). However, none turned out to be applicable to my WF-4630. Well, there was one video, optimistically titled “How to fix an Epson WF-4630 printer,” that I thought would be the sought-after answer. However, its suggested fix, while tempting, was just too extreme; watch the video (really!) and you’ll see what I mean.

Thinking back, I can recall when fixing clogged printheads wasn’t this difficult. There was a time when users could reliably access and clean a printhead with relative ease. Often, the head itself could be removed and replaced if needed. Very few, if any, current inkjet printers are like this. Certainly not my Epson.

Back to my present dilemma. Before giving up entirely, I contacted Epson technical support. They confirmed what my YouTube search had already indicated: it was virtually impossible for me to access the printhead on this model. The best the support rep could offer was that I contact my local Epson authorized service provider to get the printer repaired.

I was skeptical that this would lead anywhere useful. I was right. The service tech said that, while he could do the repair, he didn’t recommend it — because the cost of parts and labor would exceed the cost of a new printer. He told me I was better off junking my printer and getting a new one!

So, while I can continue to use my Epson as a fax machine, a scanner or a black-and-white printer, it can no longer print color. If I want color, the only solution is to follow the tech’s advice — toss the printer and buy a new one.

Shame on you, Epson! And shame on all other inkjet printer manufacturers that are almost, but perhaps not quite, as awful.

Your business practices are egregious. The high cost of replacement ink is bad enough. Wasting huge amounts of ink on failed head cleanings only adds insult to injury. Must you also design your printers so that the one component that is most likely to fail (the printhead) is so inaccessible that, when it does fail, the only solution is to trash the printer? Especially when a simple manual cleaning might have saved 46 pounds of functioning hardware from winding up in a landfill? As I said, shameful!

[Note: Yes, inkjet printers can be viewed as part of a larger trend —  home appliances and digital devices that are now considered disposable rather than repairable. When one breaks, you trash it rather than fix it. It’s the most cost-effective solution, even if it’s terrible for the environment. A key difference here is that my Epson printer likely just needed some minimal maintenance; it wasn’t really broken.]

As for me, I’m done. I will never buy another inkjet printer. If I want to print photos, I’ll use Shutterfly or Costco or some similar service. For printing color documents, I’ll take them to Staples. Maybe I’ll buy a color laser printer at some point. Whatever. What I won’t do is get scammed by inkjet printer manufacturers ever again.

Flash vs. Fusion: What’s the best choice for an iMac?

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Recently, I bid adieu to my 7-year-old Mac Pro and replaced it with a 27-inch 5K Retina display iMac. Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased. The display alone has been enough to justify the upgrade.

However, my indecision over one sticking point almost wound up derailing the move. It’s the reason it took me several months from the announcement of the new iMacs last October to finally make the purchase a few weeks ago. Even after the iMac arrived, my uncertainty remained. So much so, that I almost returned the machine. The dilemma? Whether to get a Fusion Drive or Flash (SSD) Storage? And, especially if the latter, what size drive?

While I believe there is no single best choice that applies to everyone, after much internal debate, I found the right one for me.

Internal

At first, it seemed so simple. I planned to get the 3TB Fusion drive. While I could have gotten by with a 2TB drive, it was worth a $100 to have the roominess of an extra TB. I figured I’d be buying a new Mac before I outgrew that much space.

My wife already had an iMac with 3TB Fusion Drive. So I knew that the drive was adequately fast and very quiet. Done deal.

Except…my inner geek was not satisfied.

True, a Fusion Drive is fast. But an SSD is even faster. In fact, thanks to design improvements in the 2015 iMacs, Apple claims the iMac’s Flash Storage is “up to 2.5 times faster” than the SSD in 2014 iMacs.

A Fusion Drive is quiet, but an SSD is not only quieter, it’s completely silent. Plus, SSDs are the future. Within a few years, I expect HDDs (hard disk drives) to be history. Even the Fusion Drive (which is a combination of SSD and HDD) will likely be gone. I wanted to go with the future.

Further, Flash Storage, because it has no moving parts, is more reliable than a Fusion Drive. Of special note, the technology that “melds” the SSD and HDD components of a Fusion Drive can fail, even if the separate components are otherwise fine, leaving you with an inaccessible drive. This will require Apple to fix it. While not common, this has happened to a few friends of mine.

The HDD component of a Fusion Drive spins at 5400 RPM. Most internal drives sold today are 7200 RPM. Obviously, I would prefer the faster RPM speed. I also don’t like that, with a Fusion Drive, I have no control over what files are shunted to the SSD portion; it is all determined by Apple’s software. While such matters might not significantly impact the performance of a Fusion Drive, they still irked me.

On the other hand, the biggest problem with pure SSDs is that they are much more expensive than Fusion Drives. The largest capacity Flash Storage you can get preinstalled in an iMac is only 1TB — and it costs $700 more than a 2TB Fusion Drive.

The result? Indecision! After mulling things over for a couple of months…and changing my mind numerous times, I finally settled on the Flash Storage.

I was not quite done. I still had to decide which size to get. The 512GB option, at only $100 more than a 3TB Fusion, quickly emerged as my preferred choice. The lesser, 256GB drive, although twice the size of the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive, was too small to hold my essential files (System and Home Libraries, Applications and Documents). At the other extreme, the 1TB Flash Storage still wasn’t large enough to hold all my files; not worth the extra cost.

External

With the main dilemma decided, I had one more problem to resolve: What sort of external storage would I use?

The 512GB SSD was 1/6 the size of the 3TB Fusion Drive I had initially planned to get. To accommodate all my data, external storage was now a requirement. Even if I could fit all my data on the internal SSD, I would still need external storage for mirrored backups. In other words, I would need at least 2 external drives.

Initially, I decided to buy an OWC ThunderBay 4 ($400). With this unit, I could transfer the three drives that had previously lived in my Mac Pro, saving the cost of having to purchase new drives. In addition, the ThunderBay provided the fastest possible transfer speeds (Thunderbolt 2) with the greatest capacity for future expansion, all via a single compact box that needed only one connection to the iMac.

This was a fine, albeit still expensive, solution. I would have stuck with this setup except for one thing: noise. Don’t get me wrong. The ThunderBay is quiet overall. Depending on your sensitivity, it may not bother you at all. But it is far from silent.

For starters, the ThunderBay has a constantly running fan. While not a noisy fan, the sound is definitely noticeable, even with the unit placed under my desk. Compared to my wife’s Fusion Drive iMac, I could instantly hear the difference.

Second, the 3.5-inch HDDs inside the ThunderBay made significant noise during read and write access. The noise was not annoyingly loud, but, once again, it was much more noticeable than similar sounds from my wife’s iMac Fusion Drive.

While all of this was tolerable, I wanted better. Better than even the Fusion Drive. I wanted to maintain the near total silence afforded by my iMac’s Flash Storage. So I looked for another solution.

Eventually, I settled on Seagate portable drives. These USB 3 drives are essentially noiseless. At least I can’t hear them. They are also about as small and unobtrusive as a drive can get. And, as they get their power from the iMac’s USB port, there are no power cords or bulky adapters to worry about.

As a bonus, they are a cheaper alternative to the ThunderBay. The two drives I got (1 2TB and 1 4TB) cost about $200: half the price of an empty ThunderBay. You could save even more money if you could fit all your data on the iMac’s internal Flash Storage (perhaps needing only a 256GB SSD?) and thus could get by with only one external drive.

The one downside is that transfer speeds via USB 3 are distinctly slower than via Thunderbolt 2. If you need maximum speed, the ThunderBay remains the preferred solution. In my case, as I use the external drives only to hold my media libraries (iTunes and Photos), archival data and backups, I didn’t think the speed difference would matter at a practical level. Most of the time, the drives would not be in use at all.

[By the way, overall, I prefer to keep my media libraries on a separate drive from my System and other Home directory files; it makes the media files less likely to become collateral damage in the event of a disaster with the startup drive.

I do have some concern regarding the long-term reliability of keeping fan-less portable drives connected to a Mac 24/7. However, my past experience doing this with other Seagate portable drives has been excellent, so I am willing to take the risk. Still, I have my data backed up elsewhere — via the cloud-based BackBlaze as well as a separate networked Time Machine drive.]

Wrapping up

So here I am typing on my new iMac. With its 512GB Flash Storage, it is both superfast and completely silent. The external portable Seagate drives provide the extra space I need without adding noise or detracting from the iMac’s curb appeal.

If your requirements are at all similar to mine, I highly recommend this solution.

The almost death of the telephoto/zoom lens

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This column started out as a eulogy — marking the anticipated end for a long-time friend. But, even as the grave was being readied, word came that my friend was showing signs of a remarkable recovery.

Who is this friend? How did things get so dire? And what’s behind the potential recovery? Read on…

The story begins decades ago, as unboxed my first SLR (single lens reflex) camera: an Olympus OM-1. It was a big step up from the point-and-shoot cameras I had been using. For the first time, whatever I saw in the camera’s viewfinder was the same thing the lens was seeing. Further, I could adjust f-stops, shutter speeds, white balance, and much more. And, perhaps most critically, I could swap lenses.

Not wasting any time, I purchased my first accessory lens the same day I bought the camera: a 28-150mm zoom lens. With it mounted, I could easily shift from a decent wide-angle shot to 3X telephoto. Yes, the lens was bulkier than the standard 50mm one that came with the camera, but it was worth the bulk. By far, the most useful aspect of the zoom lens was its telephoto range. Until then, the most common frustration I had when taking photos was an inability to get close enough to the subject. Instead of capturing that gorgeous bird I saw in a nearby tree, all I got was a photo of a tree, albeit one that contained a barely perceptible blob of color that I presumed was the bird. A telephoto zoom lens changed all that. It not only got me closer but allowed me to experiment for the exact optimal magnification, without having to keep changing my position. Fantastic!

Flash forward to today. The telephoto lens is on its deathbed, as are zoom lenses in general. Hold on. Before you jump in to contradict me, allow me to elaborate.

Yes, there are still SLR cameras (now digital) that offer the same options as my old Olympus. But, back in the “old days,” every budding amateur photographer bought an SLR. These days, they are primarily the domain of the most serious hobbyists and professionals. Far fewer people use them.

It’s also true that a zoom capability remains in today’s consumer-focused compact fixed-lens cameras. In fact, the capabilities here are incredible. My wife, for example, owns a Canon SX700. This pocket-sized camera has a 30X zoom lens — and yet the entire camera is smaller and lighter than the 3X zoom lens alone for my old Olympus! Even so, sales of these cameras are also in a steady decline.

So what are people using to take photos these days? Their smartphones of course. Recent studies have estimated that well over 90% of the photos taken today are taken with smartphones. The trouble is that smartphones, including the iPhone, have no telephoto or optical zoom options. You can buy an add-on lens to get a 2X zoom; but it’s not practical; the lenses are too much trouble for too little gain. Very few people go this route.

My wife and I fit the typical demographic. Most of the time, our Canon sits on a shelf. The only time it gets any use is when we anticipate that a telephoto capability will be critical. And sometimes not even then. That’s because our iPhone 6 and 6S take photos (and video) that equal or exceed the quality of the Canon — at least to our eyes. Further, the iPhone is far superior to the Canon for any sort of media sharing. And we always have our iPhones with us, even if we have no intent to use a camera. If we don’t expect to need a telephoto lens, there’s no reason to carry around an extra piece of equipment.

So, here I am, decades later, back to the same inability to get an unplanned shot of that bird up a tree. Ironic. Most of the time, I’m okay with this. It’s the sort of trade-off that often comes with technological advances. You lose something worthwhile from the “good old days” in order to get a myriad of desirable new features that were unimaginable years ago.

Overall, if telephoto/zoom lenses were animals, they would be on the endangered species list. It was thinking about this that led me to pen my intended eulogy. Except a funny thing happened. The telephoto/zoom lens may not be as near death as I anticipated. The latest rumors (which seem increasingly solid) suggest that Apple is preparing a dual-lens version of the iPhone 7 Plus (due out this fall) — a set-up that would include a true optical zoom. At last! Other rumors indicate that single-lens zoom technologies may be arriving in Apple’s more distant future.

For now, if the iPhone 7 Plus camera turns out to be as good as the rumors suggest, it will be a happy day for me. It will also assuredly hasten the demise of most, if not all, consumer stand-alone cameras. Perhaps there’s a eulogy to write after all.