Shinycroak

These are small, inexpensive printers and all-in-ones which use Epson's Claria six-color inkset. The quality of photographic prints from these printers is quite high; Adrian Buckmaster reviewed them at Boing Boing: I was very impressed with print quality; the image referenced above would have shown up any deficiencies straight away. A close comparison showed a slight posterisation in the mid-tone skin areas which was corroborated by the gray test strip which showed magenta cast in the mid tone areas. Sharpness was excellent; there were no tram lines or banding, and the gray areas, with the exception of the above caveat, showed clean tones. *** The Epson Artisan 800 also works well as an all-in-one, with the scanner and fax facilities simple, reliable, and of good quality. The device has a relatively straightforward touch-panel interface and less-straightforward but usable drivers. Supplies...ah, there's the rub. The Artisan line comprises three units: the Artisan 50 p

As of this writing, this is the only web site to use for free annual credit reports. Accept no substitutes--all others are not actually free, or are actual scams run by identity theives. Expect to be confused by the site (this is apparently by design), & bring a temporary e-mail account, which will be collected and placed in your credit file.

Review: "Call quality is only so-so." (cnet.com) Experience: most user speech was unintelligible to called party in a moderately noisy store. Product: Sony DR-BT160AS wireless stereo headset, which has very good stereo listening quality & probably works sort-of ok for talking in a quiet room or stopped car. Shop: Sony Outlet Store in Tualip Washington, about an hour from Seattle. A very nice shop & worth returning to for good deals on electronics.

Google , the not-so-evil empire. Google provides real high-quality  services at the cost of viewing unobtrusive advertising. The corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil" and the Google employees I know take it seriously. They're not saints, but you can do business, and not need to count your fingers afterwards. They are still a commercial empire, however, and they are rather snoopy. Amazon and Apple , medium-evil empires. Commercial empires of a more evil sort. Both do genuinely valuable things. Unfortunately, every now and again they try to take over the world. Microsoft , cell phone companies, Facebook , evil empires.The are price-gougers, monopolists, oligopolists, spies, intellectual property thieves, sellers of your time and attention. Microsoft charges hugely more than anything reasonable for their products; cell companies are probably making gross profits of 500-1000%. In dealing with cell companies, expect to feel like a chump; get the best deal you can &

This is where I put up occasionally shopping and finance advice--things I decided would be worth publishing that don't belong in my political blog. So! I'll start out with the post that persuaded me to start this blog: on evaluating online shopping services. Does the store: Let you just buy what you want? Once you've finished looking for your product, does the store let you just buy it, or does it keep offering you alternatives--that is, trying to sell you something else? This a bad sign because it tells you that the store doesn't care about your time. Exception: "you might also like..." can be a reasonable thing for books, CDs, DVDs, and so on. Ask a price comparable to market, or does it seem low? If the price is substantially lower than most other places, chances are there's a catch. Perhaps many customers return the product, and the store charges a fee for this. Perhaps the product is counterfeit, stolen, or imported to the USA without the manufac