The Great Laser Printer Toner Scam

I love my Xerox Phaser 6139N laser printer, it is a great printer and cost under £200 but one small problem is that a new set of 4 toners costs £272.00 !!!

Earlier today my Xerox Phaser 6139N said that it had run out of magenta toner so naturally I put in new cartridge. I was just about to throw the old one away but I decided that the bright pink powder warranted a closer inspection so I emptied out the remaining toner onto the table and to be honest I think it was good for a fair few extra pages.

This is how much toner was left from an EMPTY toner cartridge.

I then decided to do some more detective work and I actually weighed the empty toner cartridge and compared the weight with a full toner cartridge.

Full toner cartridge weighs 87 grams.

Empty toner cartridge weighs 72 grams.

Each toner cartridge contains 15 grams of toner.

The cost of toner is £4.60 per gram.

For comparison the cost of gold at todays price is £30.54 per gram.

Crusade For Better Picture Quality On Sky

Do you remember when Sky launched their Digital satellite TV service and their promise of perfect digital picture quality compared to the analogue satellite TV service?

I'm sure that at the time the picture quality of the Standard Digital (SD) was more than adequate.

Recently Sky have been relentlessly promoting their High Definition (HD) service and have been telling us how it is so much better then the SD service.

It is true that SD now looks completely crap and when you watch any football match you will see that the players have a pixel halo around their bodies as they run across the pitch. But in reality the SD picture does not have to look so crap and it is more likely that Sky have reduced the picture quality of SD to make it look even more inferior to their HD service.

The irony is that Sky have reduced the picture quality of SD by increasing the compression and the allocated bandwidth is reduced leaving more bandwidth for HD.

My Crusade

My crusade is for Sky to restore the picture quality of the SD satellite TV service to the best possible quality.

If you agree then please leave a comment below...

Crusade For Using Mini Roundabouts

In the UK we have a lot of mini roundabouts.

I don't have a problem with the mini roundabouts, I think they are great, but I do object to the way that through traffic approaches the roundabout at full speed with no regard whatsoever for vehicles which are already on the roundabout.

Vehicles travel too fast and can cover the distance on approach to the roundabout and then enter the roundabout in the time it takes for a another vehicle to enter the roundabout from the left.

My Crusade

My crusade is that when approaching a mini roundabout traffic slow down and not proceed at full speed against traffic which is already on the roundabout.

Do you think we need to change we use mini-roundabouts? Post your comments here…

Crusade Against The Cost Of SMS Text Messaging

Why do mobile phone SMS text messages cost so much to send per text?

SMS text messages can't possibly cost the mobile phone companies 10p or even 20p each!!

Origins of SMS

Way back then I was one of the first ever public users of the GSM network and deep inside my Nokia menus I found an arcane capability to send text message to other mobile phone users. I tested it by sending an SMS text to myself and decreed that it was just too difficult to enter a message using just the digit keys and it would never catch on.

The True Costs

The mobile phone companies must have also thought it would never catch on because they hardly advertised the service at that time or did anything to make the service easier to use.

Even the actual text message is sent using spare capacity in the mobile phone control network which is why the text message length is restricted to 160 characters. Thus SMS texts should be completely free because they don't cost the mobile phone companies anything.

The truth is that the mobile phone companies are desperate to charge as much as they can for SMS texts and they rue the day that it is was first possible to send an email for free.

My Crusade

My crusade is to reduce the costs to the public of SMS Text messages to as little as possible and for free if possible.

What do think about the cost of SMS text messaging? Post your comments below…