Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Technology Wednesday--The Machines Are Revolting, Part III (I Think)

I wrote a while back about how various appliances in my house keep conspiring to break and also incite their mechanical/electronic colleagues to follow suit. I wrote about the keyboard on the the desk top ("big" computer, as we call it) giving up the ghost and how I replaced it with a wireless model that installed itself.

Well, the machines weren't done. One day this past week I could not get my laser printer to work. It has been a great printer, with none of the fiddling and groaning and screeching of the deskjets that made me want to throw them out the window, even if they did print in color (when they printed.). But the laser printer wouldn't print anything. This is a problem for a writer trying to print a draft of a novel.

I ran through the troubleshooting checklist, re-did all the connections, re-installed the software, and tried some other things suggested by my colleagues on the Write by the Rails Facebook page after I had moaned about my recalcitrant printer. Nothing worked. After trying all day to get the thing to work, I finally concluded that the printer itself overdosed on voltage when the lights flickered during the storm a week ago Monday. I have the printer on a filter, but apparently it wasn't enough. So, I bid farewell to Mr. Laser Printer and ordered a replacement. It came in a couple of days; I installed it, and I am in laser printer heaven once again. I just hope the printer part of the All-in-One doesn't make any suggestions to the faxing or scanning part!

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