Computers Category Archive

Selecting the most suitable printers

10 Replies Christopher Roberts

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There is now an extensive range of different printers on the sites of suppliers like Ryman, and this range of choice can sometimes make the selection of the best model seem a difficult task.

As with so many other tech purchases, the way to zero in on the right printers is to first start by establishing the detail of your regular needs.

With printers, this understandably amounts to the type and frequency of the intended usage. Both of these factors have a bearing on spec of suitable printers, which in turn influences both initial outlay and ongoing running costs. Here we look at relative benefits of the most common types of printers.

Laser printers were formerly an expensive option, for business rather than home use, but costs for this technology, as with so many things in the IT world, have dropped over the years.

Those looking to produce a large volume documents will be happy with the excellent print quality of text produced by laser printers. Ongoing running costs are also low, with the relatively expensive toner cartridges lasting a long time, and commonly averaging a running cost of about 1p per A4 sheet. In contrast, inkjet printers can cost as much as 5p per sheet.

However, laser printers designed for the home use market do not usually come with the auto-duplexing function, which allows the automatic printing of both sides of the paper, and so aspiring novelists on a budget should perhaps be aware of this fact. Colour laser printers are a bit more expensive and limited in the quality of colour image that can be produced – they are not really recommended for those looking for a home photograph printer.

A PrinterInkjet printers are still the most popular for home use. Many inkjet printers can produce excellent quality photo prints and other high definition images, in full colour. Standard or entry level inkjets will perform just this function, and can be picked up inexpensively, although as mentioned can become costly if a large volume of printing is required.

For home office use, many choose to spend a little more on an integrated unit. All-in-one inkjet printers can scan, copy and print, and often fax. These kinds of inkjet printers will understandably cost more initially, but will have similar running costs as more basic models. One point to note with the integrated, all-in-one inkjet is the size of the unit, which is usually considerably larger than the standard type, and can eat up limited desk space.

While cheaper than laser printer toner cartridges, fresh ink cartridges or refills for inkjets will be required more frequently. This can get expensive, especially if a lot of high definition colour images are printed. Producing draft quality prints when definition is not an issue can go some way to reducing ongoing usage costs, and this is particularly viable when printing text.

Google gives users malware warnings

17 Replies Christopher Roberts

Yes you read right, Google is now giving users alerts if it believes that their system is infected with malware.

Over the last week, millions of users will have logged on to Google, only to find a warning telling them that Google believes that their computer ‘appears to be infected’.

Here is an image of that very message:


A Google warning telling users that their computer appears to be infected

Okay my PC isn't infected so I couldn't show you an actual message, but a clever bit of Photoshopping can help me to show you 😉

Google says that it is trying to improve the web for users, and in doing so, it believes that it can enhance users experience, and keep them safer online.

Malware can send users to ‘virus’ pages when they search Google, one of the main reasons why Google wants to help users fight it. The other is that often malware can send tonnes of spammy traffic towards Google. This is not very good for their servers, and could potentially become very costly.

Sometimes Google needs to turn some of its servers off for maintenance, meaning they need to redirect the traffic. However certain malware can keep ‘spamming’ these servers with unwanted traffic, causing the guys at Google a bit of a problem!

Google says that the main cause of malware infection is users downloading face anti-viruses when instructed to by bogus warnings on false websites.

The search giant does currently offer warnings to users on some websites that it knows could potentially infect their computer. Here is an example of the text it may put below a potentially dangerous search result:

This site may harm your computer

An example of the "This site may harm your computer." text that features below some search results in Google

Keeping safe online is a challenge, so it’s good to know that along with our anti-virus software, Google is also watching our back.

To find out more you can read the official blog post on Google’s blog 🙂

Search engines are changing the way our memory works

17 Replies Christopher Roberts

A recent article in Science Mag suggests that the use of computers and the internet might actually be changing the way our memory works.

A series of psychology experiments recently carried out have shown that sometimes, when people were presented with hard to answer questions, they began to think of computers.

If participants believed that it would be easy to find answers on Google later, then they had poorer recall of the actual answer, and yet a greater memory of where the answer was stored.

A head x-ray showing someone with a computer for a brainThe researchers said that the internet acts as a tool which we now depend upon to to aid our memories, by remembering some data for us.

Here is the abstract for the journal entry

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

In more simplified English, what this is basically saying is that it is now much easier to access data online, mainly thanks to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. If we have a question, we can find the answer in seconds.


This has lead the the human brain associating the thought of a problem with computers, as it believes that the internet will be the source of the solution. Search engines are now embeded so much in our brain, that when we think of a problem, we no longer bother trying to work out the answer for ourselves, but instead we associate the possibility of finding the solution of the problem with a search engine.

Let’s be honest, who hasn’t been bugged by something, asked someone else who also wasn’t able to help and as a result was either told “Google it” or thought “I could Google that”? I have, in fact I would say it happens on a weekly basis!

Question time

So what do you think? Are computers, the internet and search engines making us stupid, or is it just that we are now adapting as a race to more efficient ways of finding out information?