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Here’s a real great way to “hack” someone’s computer.  (It’s Friday, anything goes)

Today, we will cover several ways that can help you to reduce cost of your printing, whether you are running a home business or a company with 1000 employees.

Make sure to Preview your documents before printing:

A lot of people might think this is something they do all the time but the truth is that most people waste a lot of paper printing out the wrong portion of their content, including myself.

Use that “Preview” button to preview what you are printing. Almost all applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and MS Word have this feature.

At least think about how many million trees would be saved if “everyone” used the Preview button?

Here’s an example of print preview on Firefox: (Yes, it’s so simple, isn’t it? Your actions can save a tree.)

Use Draft mode and Black and White mode for Drafts:

You can save additional time and ink if you are still working on your draft versions by using the draft mode.

Simply click on “Properties” and you should be able to set your printer to “Draft” or “Fast Draft” mode as shown here:

Save even more ink by printing in Grayscale:

Scan all documents “digitally” into CD or DVDs

Have you thought about all the stuff that could be digitized into a Jpeg or PDF file into a single CD or a DVD?

A lot of times, people will ask you to fax some important documents in order to verify your information when doing business.

By having all documents “digitized” and accessible from a single CD or DVD (or even your G-mail), you no longer have to remember where you left that Social Security card, passport, Business License, etc…etc… Although it is good idea to keep the original copies, I find it easier to e-mail my digital copies straight from G-mail.

I could be anywhere in the world and have access to all my important documents with just 1 CD or DVD instead of lugging all your documents everywhere with you, especially going over-seas.

Best ways to digitize your documents?

Get a good office scanner. I use an HP Deskjet F380, which cost me about $70 to do printing, scanning, and copying all-in-one. Although it’s slower than a laserjet, I can do most office work using it and it scans reasonably fast. I use it to scan all my invoices, receipts, and anything that can be scanned.

If you can afford it, there are some really nice laser version of the Deskjet, LaserJet M5025, which can scan hundreds of documents at a time and send them to your e-mail when its done via a single PDF file. This can prove to be very handy for all those POs and Invoices you have stacked up in huge boxes. I remember on one of my first jobs, I digitized about 20 boxes of POs (around 100,000 letter sized papers) from Wal-mart. (Think of how many trees I saved for their future POs!)

Nowdays, that company can simply access every one of their POs via a DVD-ROM.

Buy ink cartridges online from 3rd party suppliers

Buy cheap ink cartridges from 3rd party suppliers like DataBazaar.com. I find that their prices are much cheaper even if you are buying an OEM brand.

CD and DVD Labels

Now, just make sure to label them right using good CD labels, especially if you do have a lot of data to digitize. You can download free CD templates over here. These templates are great if you actually want to organize your digitized documents. You can even get some really good discounts on CD/DVD labels here.

Label Printers

If you like to spend more money, you can always get a label printer too. I have tried Dymo label printers before and these work really good with address labels or CD/DVD labels.

Print Labels and get your mail delivered faster!

Instead of spending time writing the addresses, I use my printer to print out labels so I save time on my frequent mailings and my mail gets there faster.
(Did you know that US Postal Service actually uses a scanner to process mail? If you have handwritten addresses, your mail will could actually take 1-2 days more due to manual scan by human workers. I did learn this through an executive manager I talked to at Pitney Bowes.)

By using labels instead of handwriting, you will save yourself hassle of writing and your mail will get to your destination faster. (You can even print out the US Postal Service address bar code on the envelope itself to ensure super fast delivery.)

You can also save some money by ordering labels from online label shops such as WorldLabel.com, which I have used before and found 40-50% cheaper than retailers. They even have popular “size-compatible” Avery labels, much cheaper than buying the branded ones.

Now, if you think this blog post will “change” printing behaviors of our readers, please leave a comment on how many trees you think we saved today.

I was site hoppin’ over at Gizmodo today and for some reason their posts were down but I had the pleasure of watching their flash ad.

Hope you enjoy and why are all computer dealers/manufacturers still shipping their PCs and laptops with Vista installed? At least let the people have an option to have XP pre-installed. (Yes, that means you Dell, HP, Compaq, Sony, etc…etc… why are you guys so dumb and promote a “dumb” Vista? Yes, you guys probably make way too much money to actually care about people. Stop hiding in your stupid looking grey suits and respond to me you dumbasses!)

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Here’s a funny cheap lie detector you can make. I don’t know if it really works since there’s no circuit diagrams but you can find lots of lie detector circuit diagrams on the internet like this one I found in about 5 seconds:

Yes, these lie detectors probably won’t work on cats, maybe try dogs.

via dailyapps

The other day, my home had power-outage for like 6 hours. I could go buy a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), or I can make my own UPS using a car battery.

Well, I am just hoping this DIY UPS lasts 6 hours so I can keep using my spare laptop, which shouldn’t need that much power anyways to run off the UPS. But if I tried to run my desktop PC, it’d probably last only 2-3 hours at most, maybe even less.

This DIY is for 220 Volts so you will have to make some calculations to make sure you are providing the correct number of invertors and etc…etc… Btw, if you do use it for powering up your laptop, you don’t need an invertor as most laptops are around 12VDC anyways, which is what car batteries are at. (But you will need to hack an adaptor to the laptop for sure)

In this article we look at how you can cobble together a 220 Volt power supply using components you can buy at your local automotive store. But first it is important to understand a few basics about batteries, and how to convert 12 Volt DC battery supplied electricity into 220 Volt AC current that your household appliances can use.

A twelve Volt battery is a storage device that, when charged, stores electricity in chemical structures that can reverse and release electricity if required. Batteries are typically rated in Amp Hours (AH) - ie how many Amps for how many hours the battery will perform. An inverter is a device which can take the DC current from a battery and convert it into 220V AC current for your appliances.

To calculate how many batteries you need, and how big an inverter is quite simple. Investigate the specification plates on the back of each appliance. In the case of my laptop, the power supply is a 90W unit.

For an inverter one can work on a rule of thumb that to produce 100W will require approximately 10 Amps, hence in reality the lap top requires about 10 AH of battery life per hour. With a 90 AH battery one can therefore expect about 9 hours of power before the battery provides too little current to keep the inverter going. But it is not this simple.

[via] scienceinafrica

Check out some of these really cool ways you can make your own Laptop stands. My favorite is as seen above, the wine corks and PVC pipe stand.

Btw, these are really great ways to make your laptop live longer. Without any space between the desk and the laptop, you are practically killing and overheating your laptop. Most people don’t realize this until they overheat their laptops and it’s too late. I actually use a Laptop Chiller from Target, which is basically a Laptop Stand with a built-in USB fan that also drives out hot air through the back.

[via] Lifehacker

Wow, check out this gizmo that duplicated up to 20 USB Flash drives at one time! These days, with so many people carrying their 4GB flash drives on their neck, keychain, etc…etc…, these Giant USB Duplicators can be useful for companies trying to promote their businesses.

(For example, you could put a 4 Gigabytes of company presentations, videos, documents, etc…etc… so your clients can carry it in their pocket instead of giving them a CD, which are just way too outdated these days. Plus, you put your logo on the flash drive, it can be great viral marketing even if your client decides to erase everything and use it for personal use.)

Great Features

» Copy 20 USB flash drive automatically
» High Speed USB 2.0
» User friendly software interface
» Erase feature for USB flash memory
» Volume naming option for flash drive ID
» Format feature for those pesky unformatted drives
» Embedded verification function to insure accuracy
» Contemporary design with heavy duty case for 24/7 operation
» Copy to any size flash drive combination and from any manufacturer
» 30MBs to 20 devices is about 40 seconds.
» 250MBs to 20 devices is about 4 minutes.

You can check out their product page or press release.

FYI, this device also runs on Windows XP, meaning it’s not a standalone device. That is not a good sign. But, they ARE working on a standalone device already! (These guys are good!)

The cost for this machine is $1299, a lot cheaper than many other USB duplicators out there. Go buy one and try it. If it works well, tell us about it.

via getusbinfo