I purchased the Dell Laser Printer 1110 around 6 months ago and it has definitely been one of my better purchases.

I was sick of being ripped off on ink cartridges for ink jet printers and wanted to step up to a laser. My problem is that I wanted color, fax, a scanner, a copier, and other features. You know, one of the all in one machines. Unfortunately, the laser multi-function printers are still a bit pricey for the average consumer.

When I saw the Dell Laser 1110 go on sale for $69.00 during Dell Days of Deals I decided to just pay the money. It only came with a half full toner cartridge at that price, but this will still do a thousand pages and won't dry up on you like ink cartridges will.

Dell Laser Printer 1110 Specs

These were taken from the Dell 1110 Laser Printer Product Page on Dell's Canadian Website. You can find detailed specifications there as well.

• Fast Up to 17 pages per minute(actual print speed will vary with use)
• Sharp text and graphics at 600 dpi
• Small footprint of (Depth, Height, Width) 11.71"x 8.54"x 14.1"
• 150 sheet input/ 100 sheet output
• Ship with Cartridge (1,000 page yield toner included, Standard Yield Cartridge (2,000 page yield toner) available
• Easily manage supplies with the Dell Toner Management System
• One full year of 24x7 hardware warranty support and 90-day Advanced Exchange Service. Optional upgrade to 1-3 Year Advanced Exchange

What I Like About the Dell Laser Printer 1110

Very Basic

There is nothing to this machine. You plug it in, set it up, and turn it on. There is an on/off switch on the back of the machine and one big button on the top. That's it.

The Price

$69 is really cheap, but regular price is only CA$99. This comes with the same half size toner cartridge.

Compact

It is relatively small in size. I have it sitting underneath my computer desk. The paper tray folds up so that is forms a nice cube shape if you ever wanted to stack it somewhere.

Simple To Use

Very basic. Turn it on and print.

Manual Duplex Printing

I thought this would be difficult to use, but it is pretty good. You choose this option when you print and the Dell 1110 outputs a stack that you pick up exactly as it is and place it back in the paper tray. You then press the button on the top of the printer and it finishes up with a properly ordered, double-sided printout in the output tray.

What I Do Not Like About The Dell Laser Printer 1110

I cannot say much since the price was so low on this unit, but there are a number of things I would like out of printer. When the prices get lower, I will definitely look for the following in the future.

It is lacking all of the following features:

• Color
• Fax
• Automatic Duplex (printing double-sided)
• Scanner
• Copier (double-sided)
• Tray feed (so you can feed a stack of papers in to be copied)

Post a Comment ... (2 Comments)

This owl was perched in a cage at the guest house I was staying at in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was kind of creepy looking, but I had to get a picture of his big yellow eyes.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

I was in southern Ontario for a wedding in November of 2004 and was able to see a few sights while I was there. At Niagara Falls, you can go down into some tunnels to get a better look at the falls. As you walk along at one point, you can look down this tunnel and see the waterfalls pounding down.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

I have always wanted a macro lens to get those close up shots, but have convinced myself out of it. They are more expensive, take up more space in the bag, and can be a bit cumbersome to change lenses depending on the situation.

Anyhow, my wife purchased the Hoya Close Up Filters for me and I have to say they are a convenient middle point for taking macro shots. You can get a set of 3 filters that are 1x, 2x, and 4x. The ones I have are for 52mm thread diameter lenses so it works perfectly on my 50mm Nikon 1.8D lens.

Basically, it decreases the minimum focusing distance for you lens so that you can get closer to the object than you were able to before. I was able to get a lot closer to my test subjects at Christmas time and get some decent close up photos.

Limitations

It does not get a 1:1 ratio so you will not be able to get your subject to be the same size in the photo as it is in real life, but it definitely can make it a couple magnitudes larger.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

I spent the first week of 2008 in northern Idaho at the Stoneridge Resort at Blanchard. One of the closer ski hills is Schweitzer Ski Resort. It is a fantastic little ski hill that claims to be the 3rd best tree skiing in North America. I don't know if that is true or not, but I had a pretty good time.

Just a few minutes north of Sandpoint, Idaho, you turn west off the highway. There is a parking lot at the bottom where you can take a bus up to the top. I think they said it was around 9 miles from the bottom to the top so it is as bit of a drive. When you get up there, there are a few different parking lots that are basically all ski in and ski out of, but be careful. The top parking lot is a $10 fee to use.

There is a front side and a back side to the hill and there are quite a few treed areas that you can ride through. Quite a few of them I would say are blue tree runs so it is good for more beginner types.

Not Too Crowded

It might have been the day, but there were a ton of vehicles parked there, but the hill still does not seem very crowded. It is more of a family hill with a lot of chalets and condos on the hill so the chairs at the bottom of the green runs were the busiest. Once you were on the backside it was no more than a minute wait to get on a lift.

The same story for the lodge. It was easy to find a spot to eat and lots of places to throw a nap sack with food and what not.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

This is me with my goofy grin. I had just scrambled up one of the mountains (forgot the name) to the south of Canmore, Alberta, Canada. I had a picture taken looking down from the top at Canmore. Pretty spectacular view from up there.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

I read a blog regularly called Epic Edits Weblog. There is an excellent article with 31 Lessons In Portrait Photography.

Check it out for some good examples and things to think about.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

This little guy/girl was looking pretty cute as he tried to run across the cul de sac in Victoria, British Columbia. I took this with my Canon S50 point and shoot camera.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)

Well I have already screwed up my Acer laptop, but have managed to recover it (somewhat). I purchased the Acer Extensa 5420 in the end of December 2007 and been quite happy with the laptop so far.

Note: In November of 2009 I did have a power jack problem with my Acer Extensa.

I have been installing applications and I decided to upgrade to the latest ATI drivers for my ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400XT video card that is inside. I went to the ATI website and searched through their drivers sections. This is where I went wrong.

ATI's Site Does Not Provide Laptop Drivers

I was searching around for drivers and could not find the 2400 series drivers in the Mobility section so I downloaded the ones from the regular Radeon area. If I had read the fine print in the Mobility section, I would have seen that they do not provide drivers for laptops. The laptop manufacturer is responsible for this.

Anyhow, after I installed the driver package I downloaded, the laptop would only boot to a black screen. After some messing around I decided I would just to the restore from the hidden partition (feature on Acers) since I didn't have much on the laptop yet.

Note: After going through my steps below, I realized some things take a long time and I am wondering if I just let the laptop sit at the black screen for awhile if it would have finished something it was doing. You can try this if you want.

Restoring From The Hidden Partition

It is pretty simple.

• At the Acer screen on bootup, press F2.
• In on of the screens there is a D2D option. Make sure it says Enabled.
• Save your settings and exit.
• At the Acer screen on bootup, press Alt-F10.
• You will prompted from here on where you want to restore or not.

Notes About Restoring the Acer Extensa

The actual restore was only 7 minutes, but everything else seemed to take a long time. There were not a ton of screens to fill in, but there is a few. I let my laptop sit and chunk away through various parts for a few hours.

There are initial users to set up, some registration info, license agreements to accept, and some locale settings.

The most unnerving was that even after I rebooted and logged in for the first time, the screen was black except for a command prompt window that was up and running. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and went into Task Manager to see what was going on. The CPU was running around 50% and it did this for quite some time (2o minutes), but eventually I was logged in. I think it was some sort of initial setup.

Getting Acer Extensa Drivers

Rule of thumb for the video card: DO NOT DOWNLOAD VIDEO CARD DRIVERS FROM THE ATI WEBSITE. GO TO ACER'S SITE.

NOTE: I have not yet done the steps below because I am still restoring my laptop.

I found the Acer Support website and if you are looking for any drivers, start with the Acer Drivers page. I had Windows Vista so I went into Vista and then Drivers to get the file VGA Driver_ATI_v8.402_Vista.zip, but there is also another version (for XP users?) at VGA 20ATIv.2.8.383.zip.

There is a more viewer friendly version with their FTP viewing page. Just find Extensa and work your way into the drivers section from there.

Explore this site. You will find a digital copy of your manual and there is BIOS software as well.

Post a Comment ... (360 Comments)

Cheryl and I were engaged on August 13, 2004 in Calgary, Alberta. That night we went for a nice dinner at The Cannery Row. Excellent food for and excellent day. The waitress took this photo for us with my Canon S50 point and shoot camera.

Post a Comment ... (0 Comments)