RIVER BENDER - May,  2003

You've probably heard that Dell is planning to delete floppy drives, but did you know why? It's because they have a new flash memory module that plugs into a USB port and instead of just 1.44mb on a floppy you can get a minimum of 16mb storage on the module, sometimes called a memory stick. The real plus is that it only costs about $20, the same price as a floppy drive. If you want 64mb you pay about $60. Dell's doing it only on their high end models initially but other models are expected to lose the floppy drive by the end of the year.

The Dell move makes sense. You get more bang for the buck but I think we have a problem that nobody seems to be working on. There's no standard for archival storage and it keeps changing. At one time I had lots of files stored on 5-1/4" floppies that had to be converted to 3-1/2" floppies. Now it looks like I'm going to have to convert 3-1/2" floppy files to something else. Too bad we can't seem to depend on any digital storage technology lasting long. And even if the media lasts awhile, the compression technique changes and we're back to incompatible again. I read that the National Archives are spending millions trying to decide what to do about the nations archived documents. So far, paper seems to outlast everything.

Everybody has old family photos in albums or shoeboxes. Do you suppose your grandchildren will have such a collection to show the special events in their lives? I doubt it. They're taking digital pictures and storing them on hard drives or other media that are going to disappear. They can print digital pictures but it turns out that most folks don't print them because they take too long or use expensive ink or photo paper. It has also been discovered that digital photos don't last like regular photos (put them under glass and keep them out of sunlight). Kodak and others are working on the problem and trying to develop special paper to make them last but in the meantime it looks we're going to have a generation with little permanent record of events in their lives.

Speaking of printing, how long do you think it will be before ink cartridges will cost more than the printer? I finally got tired of high priced ink cartridges and bought a $9.95 Nu-Kote Refill kit at Wal-Mart. I had tried using a refill kit earlier when I first bought my printer but ink leaked into the electronics and killed it. I was lucky that HP repaired the printer under warranty because they sent a letter saying I had violated the warranty using foreign ink. Since I've heard that the ink is much better now I decided to try the Wal-Mart Nu-Kote Refill kit. Here's how it worked on my empty HP 51626A black ink cartridge: A plastic template was placed over the cartridge with a hole in it to guide exactly where to place a little drill tool provided. In the early days HP had a replaceable plug in the cartridge top but discontinued it after they found people using it to refill cartridges. Now you drill your own hole. After drilling it you fill the cartridge using the squeeze bottle full of ink and cover the hole with a piece of tape. All that's left is to pump a little air in the tiny vent hole on the cartridge using the hypodermic needle provided. The Refill Kit worked great and I haven't had a drop of ink leak into my printer. It sure saved money. Hey, I go back to the days when I saved money by re-inking my printer ribbons.

I suppose by now everybody suspects I'm a tightwad. It's true. I don't have the latest PC or printer or anything electronic or automotive for that matter. My old Gateway 200mHz Pentium Pro and printer were bought back in '96 and both are still doing fine. It's hard to believe that my PC was once the fastest gun in town and nobody had 65mB of RAM like me in '96. Nowadays, the cheapest PCs on the market are 10 times faster than mine. I'll probably get a new PC someday and perhaps even a new car when the stock market rebounds but in the meantime I going to let my old stuff, including my wife chug along happily. My grandkids, each with their 2gHz Dells, kept saying "You need a Dell dude!"

One more subject: My wife needed a calendar the other day to mark up and I found a great site where you can print out each month of 2003. See http://www.printfree.com/Calendars.htm. Another savings.

All past issues of my River Bender articles are at http://www.always-online.com/nbcug/dwindex.htm. By the way, this is my 6th year of writing the monthly articles for the RIVER BENDER.