Technitard

Trapped in the Machine

Home Archives for 2009

Archives for 2009

Outlook 2007 Enterprise Repeatedly Attempts Configuration

If you own an Acer Aspire PC running Windows Vista, you are no stranger to problems and frustration. Microsoft, in it’s infinite greed, decided to release a basic home version of Windows Vista that was completely useless. It did this so PC builders such as Acer would be compelled to fork over an additional 10% for the premium version of Vista. Which they did. Acer, however, did not take into account the additional memory requirements of the Vista Premium, and unloaded a bunch of underpowered computers that do not run satisfactorily as purchased. There is a pending class action lawsuit to address this ripoff, fraud, or whatever you want to call it. But I digress.

If you attempt to install MS Outlook Enterprise on your system, but every time you start an Office application, you have to go through a lengthy configuration process, this is probably what is happening – > When you purchased your Acer system, you had the trial version of MS Outlook installed. This installation had an add in in an Acer application called eDataSecurity Management. When you uninstalled the trial version of Outlook, this add in was not uninstalled. Now, when you start your shiney new Outlook Enterprise, your add in triggers configuration based on the old trial version of Outlook.

Solution: The quick answer is to uninstall Acer eDataSecurity Management. The more lengthy, and probably better solution, would be just to remove the add in. A subject for another post.

HP 2550L Imaging Drum Warning Light

I have an HP 2550L Color Laser Printer, and I was defrauded when I purchased it. Nowhere on the box or in the sales literature did it say that the printer would stop working when counter chips glued to the toner cartridges and imaging drum reach some arbitary number. Not when the toner cartridges are empty, or the imaging drum produces degraded quality. Just when the counter reaches a number determined by HP, apparently to force you to buy supplies at an increased rate. So when you see the flashing orange light, bend over and smile!

There are three remedies for this fraud.

1) Make HP pay you for the waster toner and imaging drum impressions they force you to throw away. Good luck with that.

2) Reset the counter on you toner cartridges or imaging drum. This sounds promising, but I couldn’t get it to work. If you would like to try though, here’s the procedure (remember this did not work for me, and MAY mess up your printer, so use at your own risk. It had absolutely to effect on my printer, but was claimed to have worked for others):

1 Turn the printer off.
2 Press and hold the GO button (blue-green).
3 Turn the printer on and continue to hold the GO button (about 30 seconds).
4 After the Go, Ready, and Attention Leds all turn on, continue holding until the Attention and Ready leds switch off (GO led still on).
5 Keep pressing the GO button AND now keep pressing the red button (about 15 seconds) until the 3 leds stop blinking.
6 Release GO and red buttons.Reset is done.
7 You may have to re-install HP drivers from CD . You can now continue printing without changing drum or toner.

You may have to follow this procedure many times until you get the timing exactly right. I gave up after 10, and went on the the next option, which did the trick nicely.

3) Buy an after market chip. These will cost you under $10 including shipping. All you have to do is pry the old chip off with a screwdriver, then apply the new self-adhesive chip to the cartridge or drum. Worked like a charm for me, and sure beat paying $200 to replace a perfectly good imaging drum.

Bing Local Sucks – Secretly

It all started when I noticed that my Bing Local business listing was still pending review, 2 months after I verified my address by mail. Not only was my local web design business not listed when I searched “Pleasanton Web Design,” but neither was any other web design company in Pleasanton. Web design companies in Livermore, Fremont, Sunnyvale and Alameda were the closest Bing could come up with. I wrote about it on my blog. To make a long story shorter, I titled the article “Bing Local Search Drives Traffic to YellowPages.com by Sucking.” Do I have proof that it is deliberate? No. Is it happening? Sure looks like it to me.

If not one pleasanton web design company is listed in a Bing local search for “pleasanton web design,” I’m obviously not the only person who is having problems with Bing Local. As a sidenote, try searching “Bing Local Sucks” on Google, and Google will remove the word “local” from your search automatically. You have to click on a link at the bottom to have the word included, even though you typed it in the search box.

As I am accustomed to do, I checked my rank on Google for the term “Bing Local Yellowpages.com” the next day to see how I was indexed. I had a preliminary hit on page one, really the Digg of my article. The next day, however the Digg listing was gone from the Google index, as I determined by searching the exact title of the article with quotes. The article itself has not been indexed, which is not that unusual as it’s been less than two weeks, and it can take that long. I have a number of blog posts written since that have been indexed and are ranking well, but I’ll give it another week before I suggest that the listings might have been removed.

Can a huge corporation pressure a search engine like Google to remove unfavorable information from it’s index? If so, is this censorship? Search engines have a lot of power in shaping our view of the world by controlling the information we see. If accurate, negative reviews or other embarrassing information is removed from the search engines, it does a disservice to everyone, except those unscrupulous businesses who would prey on people as long as they can fly under the radar.