John E. Potter, the current Postmaster General of these United States, lists Five myths about the U.S. Postal Service. I happen to think the post office is pretty efficient, more so than most people would like to admit. We think otherwise because so many people fib about when they put things in the mail and then blame the post office. It's also a grand bargain that provides an essential service in this country, especially for those who for one reason or another (often, age) are not computer-savvy.
It may cut back and even go away as folks in those category grow fewer in number...but right now, I think it's amazing how much you get for the price of a stamp.
P.J. Perez writes about the device seen in the photo above...
Thanks for sharing info about your new Brother multifunction printer/scanner/fax machine/tire rotator. Figured I'd let you know that your statement "the thing is still a lot cheaper than the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner on the market these days" is slightly inaccurate.
I was on the market for an 11x17 scanner myself last year (also for comic illustration needs), and consensus among my fellows in the community led me to the Mustek ScanExpress A3 1200, a standalone scanner that retails on Amazon for about $150.
Yeah, I was pretty shocked by the price too. It does a fair decent job for my purposes (mostly scanning pencils for digital inking and the occasional line art for coloring), though on photos it's either less effective or I just don't have the settings properly configured.
That being said, I kinda wish I'd known about the $275 Brother, as I could have used an all-in-one solution as well.
I know of Musteks. The flatbed scanner I mentioned I was replacing with my new Brother? It was one of their earlier models.
You're right. They make an amazing piece of machinery for the price, maybe for any price. I used mine for many of the scans in my book on Jack Kirby. But before anyone rushes to order one, check the Mustek site for compatibility issues with your hardware and operating system. Some of the earlier Mustek models that were around wouldn't work with every system that the mail order folks claimed they would work with. I only got the Brother because I wanted the ability to copy and print 11 by 17, as well as the space I'd save in my office by not having a separate scanner. I stand corrected about it being the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner one can buy...and seeing as how I have one, you'd think I would have known better. But some of us never do.
I am intrigued to see Jerry Brown running for governor of California again. He served in that post from 1975 until 1983. Most news stories today say he served from 1974 but he was elected in '74 and assumed office in '75.
My recollections are that I found him very annoying and arrogant and humorless in his public statements but that he did a pretty good job of running an impossible-to-run state and cleaning up a large mess left by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. (For what it's worth, I thought Reagan was not only a terrible governor his first term but that he did the kind of job that had it been done by anyone else, would have caused Ronald Reagan to demand the guy's resignation or recall. He was somewhat better in his second term and actually undid a fair amount of his own damage. Brown undid most of the rest.)
In a situation not unlike we see today with Barack Obama, and saw to some extent with Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown achieved many things as governor that were on Republican wish lists, mostly relating to fiscal responsibility. But because he was a Democrat, Republicans felt they had to figure out some way to trash him for them...and did. He also got painted as a kind of a nutcase for one or two ideas that have since proven to be eminently sensible. At one point, he proposed that the state investigate launching its own communications satellite and leasing its services out. It was prescient in terms of where technology was heading but at the time, his foes mocked him as some sort of stoned-out Trekkie who wanted to colonize the galaxy or something. "Governor Moonbeam," they called him and the label stuck — unfairly, I thought.
I have no idea what kind of governor he'd be today. Heck, I have no idea why anyone would even want to be governor of California these days. The financial crisis looks increasingly unfixable and may require not just a restructuring of our state treasury but of our state constitution, as well. But even as a Democrat, Brown has always been fiercer about controlling the size and spending of government than most Republicans who claim to believe in that kind of thing. I might change my mind the minute he starts campaigning but right now, I'm thinking he could be the right man for the job.
To no one's surprise, Jay Leno's return to The Tonight Show won its time slot last night. I am amused by the fact that the New York Timesreport is headlined, "In Return Engagement, Leno Soundly Defeats Letterman," whereas Tom Shales over on the Washington Post started an online chat about TV proclaiming...
Bad news for Jay Leno fresh to us from ace reporter Emily Yahr in TV Team News Central. PRELIMINARY repeat preliminary ratings show Leno returning with pretty paltry numbers last night -- DOWN 24 per cent from Conan's debut night as Tonight Show host, DOWN 55 per cent from figures for Leno's first night in Prime Time.
Talk about trying to spin a story the way you want to see it. Obviously, opening night numbers like that don't prove a lot either way, though I suppose it would have meant something if Jay hadn't won the time slot. Actually, I'd be a little suspicious of any news story on the time slot that parsed it all as Jay versus Dave. Jay's real competition there — the show that's been winning — is Nightline. I know it's more Up Close and Personal to pit Jay against Dave because of their history and because it's more fun to follow a war where the combatants both have faces (Nightline really doesn't) but NBC doesn't care if Jay draws viewers away from CBS or ABC. And for some time now, there have been more tuning in ABC at 11:35.
I recently bought one of these. It's the Brother MFC-6490CW all-in-one. It's a printer. It's a fax machine. It's a copier. It's a scanner. I haven't figured out how to use it yet to rotate the tires on my car but I'll bet it can do that, too. And win a gold medal for Curling at the same time.
This all-in-one may be of particular interest to folks in the comic book field because it can print, scan and copy up to 11" by 17", which is the size to which a lot of comic book originals are drawn. 11-by-17 scanners are beastly expensive. I know folks who've spent $1200 for theirs and all it does is scan. The Brother MFC-6490CW can be purchased via an Amazon affiliate for $275 and that includes shipping. It's a bigger printer than the Lexmark I had on the stand before but the Lexmark would only scan up to 8-and-a-half by 11, so I also had an 11-by-17 flatbed scanner I can now get rid of. Thus, I'm gaining a little space in the upgrade.
Printing-wise, it seems fine. Copying-wise, likewise. The automated document-feeder, so far, remains unjammed, even copying 11-by-17 originals. And here's a biggie: I've found that the top paper tray (it has two) will handle thicker paper than the manual says. I was able to copy onto the kind of two-ply drawing paper that we usually use in comic book production. That info will probably excite someone reading this. In theory, what I could do would be to lay out a page on my computer, place all the panel borders and word balloons, then print out the drawing paper with all of them in place so an artist could just fill in the pictures. I can think of other uses, as well.
Set-up on my network took a while, including one phone call to the Brother tech support folks, who couldn't have been nicer and more effective. It does look though like a machine that's been priced way low because they figure to make a heckuva profit on selling me ink cartridges for it. That seems to be unavoidable these days, at least with any printer that will service all or most of my needs. One feature I may miss from my old Lexmark is that the Brother doesn't do automatic two-sided printouts. But if you need that, wait a week. Now that I've bought this machine, they're sure to come out with a model that does that.
As for scanning: The Brother interface, which I access through a piece of software called ControlCenter, does a nice, quick-and-dirty job of it without things like cropping or sophisticated color correction. If I address the scanner through Adobe Photoshop though, it does all the fancy stuff. The Brother claims to be able to go up to a 1200 by 1200 dpi scan, which is a lot more dots per inch than I've ever needed. The art I scanned for my Jack Kirby book was plenty detailed (and the files sizes were almost too big to work with) at 600 by 600.
So far, so great...but don't buy one just because I'm happy at this moment. I wouldn't want your purchase on my conscience if the thing went kablooey next week or it turned out that the $100+ I just spent on ink cartridges will only last 'til Thursday. I would think though that if you have need of an 11 by 17 scanner, it might be worth the purchase just for that. Even if the copying and printer functions didn't work at all, the thing is still a lot cheaper than the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner on the market these days. I'll post more about this as I learn more.
March 1, 2010
