In My Bag

My mom’s 50th birthday is coming up on April 26th. I’ve been joking around with her, threatening to serve up a black birthday cake (I might do it as a gag, and have the “real” cake on hand in case she cries, lol), offering to buy the best anti wrinkle cream I can find, and picking up several packs of Depends for her.

All kidding aside, my mom may be turning 50, but she certainly doesn’t look 50! In fact, we’re often mistaken as sisters. When I was younger I thought that was cool. But now, with 24 looming right around the corner (June 13th), it’s not so cool anymore. :/

I thought I’d make an update on the progress of my HP Photosmart 8750 Professional Photo Printer. If you haven’t read the entry, or don’t feel like re-reading it, I was having some issues with printing due to there being a bug with the Windows Vista “compatible” driver that HP released, and these were my options:

• Install Windows XP on either my desktop or laptop and print from there, as the border and sizing bug is exclusive to Windows Vista
• Install Mac OS X Leopard on my laptop and try printing from there (again, the bug seems to be exclusive to Vista)
• Deal with the borders and jaggedness
• Bitch to the high heavens at HP
• Upgrade to a printer that doesn’t have these issues
• Find some sort of workaround

I really don’t want to keep Windows XP around just for printing purposes. That’s a ridiculous inconvenience. And my laptop’s new hard drive isn’t here yet, so I haven’t installed Mac OS X Leopard.

Dealing with borders and jaggedness? I don’t think so.

I’m waiting an email back from HP. Apparently the printer is out of warranty, so they’re not wanting to do squat. That’s ridiculous though — regardless of whether the printer is under warranty or not, HP should release a truly Windows Vista compatible driver, since this issue IS well known and documented with many unhappy owners of this printer, myself included.

getheavenly.com is a website that carries junior clothing, and promises that everything on its website will be priced no higher than $17.95. With tops, hoodies, pants, shorts, skirts, dresses, outwear and accessories, you could probably furnish an entire wardrobe at a very affordable price.

I, unfortunately, do not wear junior sizes, but if I did you better believe I’d be snapping up this, this, and definitely this:

Dear manufacturers of the clothing that getheavenly.com wears: wake up and smell the twinkies. Fat girls need stylish clothing too! With 1 in 3 Americans being obese, you’re alienating a lot of potential customers by making and carrying junior sizes exclusively.

Sincerely,
A fat girl who doesn’t dig muu-muus, tents and elastic waistbands

So I’ve had the HP Photosmart 8750 Professional Photo Printer for almost six weeks now, but I haven’t yet written up a review about it. Why? It’s not for a lack of desire to, or a lack of the necessary supplies (photo ink, paper). Instead, it’s been an issue with printing.

The issue stems from a buggy driver HP released and had the nerve to dub “Windows Vista ready”.  The main issue seems to be when printing photos. For starters, they are not sized correctly. Regardless of cropping a photo so that it is exactly 4 x 6, 5 x 7 or 8 x 10, and then selecting the corresponding paper size in the print dialog box, the printer prints it so that it’s compressed. A 4 x 6 comes out as a 3.5 x 5, and an 8 x 10 comes out as an 8 x 9.5. Worst yet, the squeezing of the photo causes ugly jagged borders to show up in the photos themselves, particularly around eyes, mouths, faces and clothes.

The following scan is a comparison of a photo printed on my compact printer, the HP 475, and then the same photo printed on the HP 8750. Both times the print settings were the same (borderless 4 x 6), and both times the same type of photo paper was used - HP Premium Plus, soft gloss.

Where can I go from here?

• Install Windows XP on either my desktop or laptop and print from there, as the border and sizing bug is exclusive to Windows Vista
• Install Mac OS X Leopard on my laptop and try printing from there (again, the bug seems to be exclusive to Vista)
• Deal with the borders and jaggedness
• Bitch to the high heavens at HP
• Upgrade to a printer that doesn’t have these issues
• Find some sort of workaround

Well, I don’t want to go back to Windows XP.

I’m going to be installing Mac OS X Leopard on my laptop as soon as the new hard drive I ordered arrives. But I don’t know how well Mac OS X Leopard will play with my printers, seeing as how they’re connected to our network via a print server that isn’t Mac OS X compatible.

I am not going to deal with the borders and jaggedness, and as documented by others who ran into this dilemma, HP acknowledges the issue but so far has not coughed up a fixed driver.

I’m considering a printer upgrade (I’m watching two listings on eBay for the HP PhotoSmart Pro B9180, whose driver is 100% Vista compatible, so there are no print issues). Cost is the main factor. Of course, I can always re-sell the 8750 after purchasing the B9180…

And lastly, I found a thread on a photographers forum that lamented about the 8750 Vista bug, and in that thread was mention of a program called QImage, which has been advertised as being able to take print sizing and such into its own hands and thus override the buggy Vista driver. I’m going to be installing that tonight, so I’ll report back on my success, if any.

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I came across dirmania.org tonight. It is a free web directory which is geared towards providing free advertising for businesses. The directory is search engine friendly, which means that having your listing in it will not only provide you with more exposure, but can actually boost your ranking with many of the popular search engines, including Google. Boosting your ranking is important because it means that your website will be listed higher up in the search results with these search engines.

If you have a small or medium sized business or website, consider getting it listed with dirmania.org. It’s absolutely free, so all you have to “lose” is a bit of your time!

When I first saw these when I was pregnant with my now twenty month year old son, I thought I would melt from the cuteness. Unfortunately for me, I forgot all about BabyLegs until I saw them at Target last month. I bet you can imagine what I purchased that day.

BabyLegs, which sell for about $12 a pair, are basically thigh high socks minus the foot part. They are 80% cotton, 15% polyester and 5% spandex. BabyLegs also come in natural organic cotton and organic wool. They come in a variety of colors and styles, including solid, stripes, plaid, polkadots, and funky repeating patterns.

My only critique about the BabyLegs is their tendency to roll down. I wish they came with wider cuffs to keep the BabyLegs up around the thighs. Either that, or someone better manufacturer baby garters!

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Several weeks ago my husband came home with a sample of Brother Premium Glossy Photo Paper for me to use. I’ve kind of veered away from glossy in favor of matte, but I still use glossy off and on, particularly for photos of the kids, or photos with lots of colors.

So… I could tell you that I am pleased with the quality of the photo paper. And that while it doesn’t feel as thick as HP’s Premium Plus Photo Paper (Gloss), that it still seems just as good. And that paper thickness would be a moot point since most of our photos go right into albums or photo frames.

But instead I’ll let you judge for yourself. The following is a scan of the same photo printed twice: first on Brother Premium Glossy Photo Paper, and then on HP’s Premium Plus Photo Paper (Gloss). Ignore any crookedness - that is from me failing at lining up the photos properly on the scanning bed.

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