Scamwagon

The other day I saw an ad from Staples, touting their line of HP All-In-One printers, designed to rival small color laser printers in terms of price and printing quality. The basic message was, "Don't buy a laser printer- buy an Officejet. It's cheaper per page, and lower electricity cost, than laser!". They also had a deal where you could get a $50 discount for bringing in your old printer for recycling (certain printers). Since I am the manager of several bands, and part of that role is advertising, I realized that we have a need for a good quality color printer. I had a hulking office laser printer that recently died, so I decided to load it into the car and see if there was a deal for me at Staples. I arrived and had a look at these printers- such as the HP Officejet 6500 Wireless All-in-One Printer, Eco Easy Edition , the HP Officejet J4680 All-in-One Printer , HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-One Printer , and a few others. I will say that prices were very lo...

Does this sound familar? You are in the middle of a great movie. Your cellphone or landline rings. Your muscle memory kicks in, you glance at the screen to see who's calling, and observe the following: "Private" Quickly, you think to yourself, "My God, it could be anyone!" Your reaction to this paltry dilemma will most likely be: A. "Wow, someone who doesn't want me to know their number. It could be important! I'll take the call." B. "It could be a telemarketer, or someone I really don't want to talk to. I'll err on the side of caution and let it go. Besides, they can leave a voicemail, and if it's important, I'll call them back after the movie is over." C. "There's a 'special place' in my heart for people who have the nerve to use caller ID blocking.... And it's not the one that encourages me to answer calls." If you ask most people, the answer will NOT be A. If you choose to employ ...

Something positive for a change. I thought I'd take a moment to sing the praises of (possibly the only) service that I have dealt with for the last 3 years, without a single reason to complain. A company that I maintain the e-mail server for has been using PeertoPeer.net for off-site anti-spam, virus scanning and anti-phishing protection. Don't be put off by the sleazy marketing approaches on their website. After 3 years of use, I'm happy to report that the only experiences I've had with them have been: 100% uptime Friendly, prompt, and technically adept tech support, U.S. based, not off-shored Effective filtering that has not required any interaction for tuning, false positives, etc. Affordable service - $19.95 per domain Setting up the service is easy- point your MX record to the service, supply them the IP of your mail host(s) and lock down your incoming traffic at the firewall. Some people believe it is a bad idea to contract out filtering to an outside server...

So Broadvoice now requires that customers (even ones that have been signed up for years, such as myself) send them a copy of their driver's license, and credit card they use to pay. A notice "requesting" such is triggered when you make any modifications to your payment info (such as changing the credit card on file) . I don't think it's Federal regulation, as it seems Broadvoice is the only one doing this, but I'm sure it's some sort of CYA move. Now, a lot of people complain about Broadvoice, but I personally have had a pretty good experience with them. They have reasonable pricing, excellent tech support, and I have not had a problem with their uptime. The only issue I've ever had is that Verizon Wireless likes to drop Broadvoice exchanges from their routing tables once in a while, which Broadvoice can hardly be blamed for. However, I have not had the pleasure of dealing with their administrative folks until now. So... I did some Google search...