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Tech News & Commentary
Irene in Madison, Wisconsin listening on WTDY 1670 asked: “What kind of wireless printers do you recommend for general use?”
If you’re strictly referring to the “kind” of wireless, we’d pick WiFi over Bluetooth for general use, especially because the range for Bluetooth is only 35 feet. Now if what you mean is what model, we can recommend a few.
Here in our studios we use an Epson WorkForce 635. It’s a WiFi printer, scanner and also a fax machine. That may be overkill for you, but we have found it to be a very good all-in-one printer. The downside is that it is fairly advanced and it will cost you around $150 to $200. There’s an Epson app for iOS that lets you print wirelessly from your iPhone or iPad. It’s called “Epson iPrint” and is available for free. And yes, it works with the WorkForce 635, we’re recommending for you based on our experience.
You can get all of that except for the fax for much lower prices, for example, an HP DeskJet 3050 is a WiFi printer and scanner (no fax) with a suggested retail price of $80. But even that’s a little high. Newegg.com has it listed for $69.99. If you don’t care about the scanner and want to save a little money, you can get the HP DeskJet 3000 instead of the 3050 for about $55 online.
Mark just recently set up a Canon Pixma MX420 wireless color all-in-one printer, scanner, copier, and fax on his home network. It’s a little bit more expensive than the HP models, running about $99 for the model he has, but it has some really advanced features. It can scan across the network, it can print from or scan to a USB thumb drive plugged in to the front, it has an Automatic Document Feeder for scanning stacks of documents up to 30 pages, and its print quality and speed are excellent. I found the network setup to be easy also.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline.
Camilo in Gainesville, Florida listens to the podcast asked: “Do you know about any subscription-based comic book readers for Android phones or tablets that are good? like, quality ones? Thanks”
There are comic book apps for Android, and there are libraries you can access via those apps, but we haven’t found a real subscription service. Marvel, for example, has it’s own app with access to a library of over 3000 issues, but the app doesn’t work with Marvel’s “Digital Comics Unlimited,” meaning you can buy from library of over 3000 issues, but not really have the unlimited access you’d get from a computer.
DC has a similar app, developed with comiXology, that also gives you access to around 3000 of their issues, but you have to buy each individual one. The same goes for buying comic books from places like Amazon, you can buy Kindle versions that will work with phones and tablets (via the Kindle app), but you’ll be buying them by the book, you won’t be able to access any form of unlimited subscription.
If you still want to try an app for Android, even one that doesn’t let you access a subscription service, comiXology seems to be the favorite choice with fans, it has deals with all the major publishers (even some exclusivity deals), and it allows users to buy comics from within the app.
You have other choices, mainly ones that will let you load your own comic books from your computer. Droid Comic Viewer is popular, so is Comic Reader MOBI, and you have plenty of other options, but they won’t have the large libraries attached to them that the Marvel, DC and comiXology apps do.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Guest in this hour:
Jim Barry, Digital Answer Man – Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)
Jim always visits with plethora of gadgets! We’re about to find out what’s in his bag this year.
Anthony in Raleigh, SC listening on WPTF 680 AM sent us the following comment: “Hi Dave, thank you for the Kindle Fire app, it’s awesome!! You guys keep up the good work.”
Thank you, Anthony!
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Honestech: Audio Recorder 3.0 Plus – Convert all of your music, including cassettes, LPs and 8-track tapes, into MP3s, WAV files, audio CDs and MP3 CDs, and listen to them on your portable music players.
Intuit: Copies of TurboTax Premier
ScanMyPhotos.com: Several $200.00 eGift Certificates that can be used towards your purchase of any of their online products, such as: Prepaid Photo Scanning Box, Prepaid Slide Box, or Prepaid VHS Transfer Box