It’s been two weeks since the last spam update and since then we’ve received about 9,000 additional words worth of spam comments. Right now since July 27th, we’ve received roughly 17,000 words worth of crap. Looking beyond the usual vicodin, poker and gambling spam, here are some of my favorites:

a site for jealous people who exericise
a site for wilson foosball table parts
a site for an automatic bread maker
a site for atomic wall clock temperature humidity
a site for printer ink (spam that’s actually relevant…?)
a site for satanism

It’s spam sites like these that rise above the rest and really distinguish themselves. They could teach everybody a thing or two.

How do HP printers compare with other brands? How expensive are they? What are the negatives of HP printers? For answers to questions like these, check out our new page on frequently asked questions about HP printers.

Amazon has the PIXMA MP460 on sale for $92. This is just a regular sale with no mail-in rebate and as always, it could end at any time. The retail price on this printer is $130 and it’s only been out for a few months, so this is a pretty good deal.

The PIXMA MP460 is an all-in-one photo printer that is rated at 22 pages per minute for black and 17 for color. It has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200 and Canon claims that it can print a “borderless photo-lab quality prints with dry-to-the-touch precision” 4 x 6 picture in 52 seconds. Neat.

If you already own this printer, you can leave some feedback on it for others. If you are need of Canon PIXMA MP460 ink cartridges, then you can head over to our site.

This can be a big hassle, especially if you are not computer literate. These days, printer and digital cameras come with loads of software that allow you to edit photos and to print different variations of them. The problem is that other than doing some redeye reduction, most people are really only interested in printing standard 4 x 6 or 8 x 10 copies of their photos. Sometimes accomplishing this can be difficult as well as costly, since every print you mess up on can use up a lot of ink. Well, someone recently asked the resident computer expert at the San Francisco Chronicle what the easiest way to print photos was. Here was the answer:

Open the folder containing your photos, then right-click on any photo and choose Print. The Photo Printing Wizard will launch and guide you through the process, which includes selecting photos you want to print and choosing the size and number of photos to print on each page of photo paper. For instance, you can print one 8-by-10, two 5-by-7s, three 4-by-6s, even a page full of wallet-size photos.

Should be a lot easier than manipulating all that “awesome” software your printer came with.

The easiest way to print pages of digital photos [SF Gate]

CNET has reviewed the relatively new HP Deskjet F380 and they are definitely not impressed. They gave it a 5.7 rating, which is basically the lowest we’ve ever seen them give. Getting a 5.7 rating from CNET is basically the equivalent of an F–. So far there are only two customer reviews on CNET, but both of them are bad as well.

Even though this model is called a Deskjet, it is actually a multifunction machine that can print, scan and copy. HP rates it at 20 pages per minute for black prints and 14 for color, although in their tests CNET was only able to get 3.94 ppm for text. It also took them a full three minutes to print out a 4 x 6 picture. Even though this isn’t marketed as a photo printer, that still stinks. This printer retails at $80, and according to CNET, that is the only thing it has going for it. They find fault with the print and scan quality and the speed of the printer. HP touts the fact that this printer is “light and has a “ultra-compact design”, while CNET notes that the design can make some print jobs “awkward.”

The bottom line of their review is “you get what you pay for.” Based on HP’s product description for this machine, they really weren’t trying to pass it off as anything but a good bargain machine, but it sounds like they may not have even achieved that much. This printer sounds like another example of a low-priced HP printer that should be avoided. HP does make some quality machines, but in recent years they have had an increasing number of poor quality inkjets that they sell for under $100. That is not to say that you can’t get a good cheap printer, because they do exist - you just have to be careful.

If there is anybody out there who wants to prove this review wrong, you can leave a comment and share your experience.

Buy this printer Buy HP Deskjet F380 ink cartridges

Recently there was controversy at Reuters after it was discovered that one of their freelance photographers altered a picture of Beruit. The photographer darkened the photo and added more smoke to it to make the Israeli attack on the city seem worse than it actually was. One someone discovered the alteration, Reuters cut ties with the photographer and removed all his photos from their database. All this trouble brought to light the fact that modern technology has made it extremely easy to alter digital photos.

Maria Aspan wrote in today’s New York Times:

The case also increased pressure on news photo editors, who select and edit thousands of photographs under deadline pressure each day, to detect digital alterations.

Then there is the other problem, the fact that:

many photographers use Photoshop or other programs within the standards allowed by newspapers to clean and clarify their work.

So then photographers are left to wonder how much they can clean up the picture before it is actually considered “altered”? Do they have to divulge even the smallest corrections to a picture? Just another one of those sticky situations created by the ease of modern technology…

Staples has the Brother MFC-210C on sale for $50 after mail-in rebate. The regular price for the printer is $80 and then the rebate is $40 off. There shouldn’t be any shipping so the $50 will be the final price. This offer is good until 8/19.

The MFC-210C is an all-in-one machine that is rated at 20 pages per minute for black and 15 for color. It has a resolution of up to 6000 x 1200, which is pretty good because most standard machines are 4800 x 1200. It also has some slots for memory cards and it can copy up to 17 ppm.

If you already own this machine, you can leave some feedback on it below. If you need Brother MFC-210C printer cartridges, then you can check out our site.

Sometimes people call us up and say that they just refilled their cartridge and installed it and already it’s giving them white lines. This doesn’t mean that something went wrong in the refilling process; it just means that the full amount of ink isn’t coming out like it should.

A common cause of this problem is people refilling old cartridges. If you take an ink cartridge out of printer and leave it out for more than a few days, it’s going to start to dry out. If you leave it out for a couple of weeks or months, it’s definitely going to dry out. So then if you refill one of these cartridges, you are going to be getting prints like you would if the cartridge was running out of ink. Since you just refilled it, obviously the problem isn’t because there’s no ink in there, it’s because the ink that is in there can’t get through the nozzles. For this problem, we usually recommend soaking the cartridge.

The other thing that could be causing white lines or streaks in your prints from a refilled cartridge is the condition of that cartridge. All cartridges wear out eventually, and when they do, they start performing like empty cartridges. A lot of inkjet cartridges can be refilled up to 10 times, but on average it is more like three or four refills per cartridge. The print head of the cartridge is very fragile, and eventually it will either get scratched or worn out. Otherwise, another part of the cartridge like the nozzles will wear out and your prints will deteriorate. While it’s unfortunate that you can’t just keep refilling cartridges forever, if you take care of them and if you don’t let them get dried out, they should last you a pretty long time.

Amazon has the HP Officejet 6310 on sale for $229. There are no rebates as this is just a regular sale. Since this is Amazon, there is no shipping but the sale could end at any time.

The Officejet 6310 is an all-in-one printer that includes a fax machine. It is a relatively new model that is also capable of printing photos. It is rated at 30 pages per minute for black and 24 ppm color and it has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200. It has a 35-page automatic document feeder and it has all the features that allow you to print directly from your digital camera like memory card slots and PictBridge.

If you already own the Officejet 6310 you can leave us some feedback about it. If you need Officejet 6310 cartridges, you can go to our site.

I think I will have a good future. Just an update on the spam post from last week. In the week since that post, we have accumulated about 8,500 words worth of spam. The spam telling me that our site is very cognitive used to be the most common, but unfortunately we don’t get that as much anymore. That was definitely the most well-thought-out and kind spam that we received. Lately we’ve just been inundated with NFL handicapping spam, which just doesn’t do it for me.