Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Products

The Leopard and Lexmark

I upgraded my 24″ iMac to Leopard (OSX10.5) all went smoothly. Except for my brand new Lexmark X4580 printer/scanner/reader. The printer refuses to print and even worse crashes the programme that is sending the print. Looking up in Google I found the Apple users forums where another user was having similar problems. Emails to Lexmark were met with such comments as:- From Rathna “Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the problems you are experiencing with your Lexmark product. To the best of my knowledge, there are currently no plans to develop Mac drivers to support this model” & from Ben “Unfortunately we do not have any Leopard drivers available for your printer at this moment in time. We are currently developing them, but I do not have a timescale as to when they will be ready”

Question is whether Ellee’s friends at PC World will honour their PC Performance guarantee and replace the printer with an Epson CX8400 or Canon MX700 which apparently work with Leopard.

Update 2 Nov – I’ve just learnt from the Apple Forums that trashing the printers PDE folder gets the printer working and it did 🙂

Silva Pedometer / Step counter Instruction Setup

For those that are like me and can never find instruction manuals. Here is the setup sheet for the Silva Step Counter (56012) , Pedometer (56013) and Pedometer Plus (56014). Click on the image to get the full size.

I’m now on my third one. The internal pendulum seems to only last a million steps, which for me is about a years walking or a stroll down The Camino from SJPP to Santiago de Compostella.

Other than that they are very reliable and good value. Important usage information :-

  • Always attach to your belt with a lanyard (latest models have a small hole to thread a cord through).
  • If they get wet, the displays stops working. However, they still count OK – just put near a radiator and the display will start up again.

Happy walking – they are surprisingly accurate when compared to a GPS typically to better than 1%


Self Charging Smoke Alarm

Here is a really neat product:-
“Never worry about changing batteries again. This unique smoke detector screws into any ceiling light fixture and operates off your home electricity. Reinstall the light bulb into the alarm, and now you’ve got a light source and smoke alarm in one! Recharges itself every time you turn the light on.”

Be cool to make one that works with a standard UK ceiling rose and even better that uses the house wiring to activate all the alarms in the house.

Maybe one exists?

Thanks to the Make blog for the link.