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    My new printer

    David Zeibin
    Jul 21, '05 2:57 AM EST

    I bought a laser printer. Not just any laser printer, though. An industrial-strength high-capacity 11x17 B&W HP LaserJet 5Si MX. This thing was top o' the line back in about 1998.

    I bought it for $150 CAD, but realized after getting it home that the dude I bought it from had stripped its extra memory and is JetDirect ethernet card. I was pissed. Majorly pissed.

    Anyhow, I'm now procuring parts from eBay: 96MB of extra memory, a Postscript Level 2 SIMM, and a 10/100 JetDirect card. She'll be a pretty smokin' machine after I've tricked 'er out. That's right; it's a she. ("It's a she...") I think I'll name it Shelly.

    Thank goodness I'm employed this summer, otherwise one might call such purchases, um, "foolish."

    But damn. This thing is big.

    image

    --

    Further to the reasons for the printer: I spent an unreal amount of money on printing last year in school. Of $1911.37 in school-related supplies/expenses over eight months (that includes ~$500 of hand drafting supplies, used about, oh say, once), $560 was for printing alone. And I didn't even get anything plotted, which runs for about $5/sqft for full colour, if you're lucky. Some saps spent $500+ on just poster plotting for their theses. That is stupid and dumb, considering you can buy a decent used plotter for about $2000 or so. Also, I learned that it costs a mere $18000 in maintenance/upkeep costs for the SoA to keep the school printing. That includes paper and toner and all. Not including capital expenses of about $5000 for a nice 11x17 B&W printer and ~$9000 for the 11x17 colour printer. My point: of $18000, I personally paid for 3.1% of the school's printing budget. That may not seem like much. But the school has 150 students; splitting $18000 150 ways = $120. I spent 4.7 times more money on printing than the average SoA student.

    Also, my girlfriend and I starting a 'zine dammit. It will be fun. It's gonna be called Cherry. You could maybe get a subscription. That'd be lots of fun, eh?

    And on that topic, I'm gonna go eat some cherries.

    image



     
    • 6 Comments

    • bigness

      ghhghghghghg ("homer thinking of donuts" sound)

      hell yeah, laser printers are the bomb, nice one!

      Jul 21, 05 6:28 am  · 
       · 

      Why are you and your gf starting a zine? I'm curious - is this things/stuff couples do nowadays??

      Jul 21, 05 9:50 pm  · 
       · 
      David Zeibin

      We used to work at a newspaper together. She's a journalist, and I like making pretty things. Hence, we find this sort of thing fun.

      We're also total nerds, which is also why we find this fun.

      Jul 21, 05 11:37 pm  · 
       · 
      siggers

      lol, that all put a smile on my face, thanks for sharing ;)

      Jul 22, 05 5:56 am  · 
       · 
      xtbl

      cool. put me down for a subscription!

      Jul 22, 05 6:40 pm  · 
       · 
      David Zeibin

      Just an update, to this relatively popular post (must be a slow summer?):

      I successfully won all my eBay auctions, bringing my total printer upgrade cost to $96 – for a Postscript 2 SIMM, 96MB memory, and a 10/100 JetDirect network card. Total printer cost: $246 CAD

      This particular printer retailed for about $4000 USD back in 1998. Yet I still feel somewhat ripped off. Sigh...

      Surely there will be some kind of Cherry website. Of course, I'll be sure to make it public, when the time comes...

      Jul 23, 05 12:14 am  · 
       · 

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