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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Epson Expression Premium XP-810 Small-in-One

As the Premium part of the name implies, the Epson Expression Premium XP-810 Small-in-One, offers lots of features. Some of those, like the duplex (two-sided) printing and duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), tend to be office centric. Others, like the support for PictBridge cameras and the ability to print from memory cards, are more appropriate for home use. Having all of them in one printer makes the XP-810 a better than average choice for the dual role of home and home office printer and not a bad choice for either role by itself.

The XP-810 is two steps up in Epson's numbering system from the Epson Expression Home XP-410 Small-in-One, with most of the difference showing in office-centric features like the ADF and duplexer that the Epson XP-410 lacks. However, it also shows on the home-printer side, with far better photo quality, for example, and an added tray for up to 5-by-7-inch photos. In addition to being a better home-office printer, in short, it's also a better home printer.

In addition to the ADF and duplex printing, office-centric features include faxing, Ethernet for easy connection to a wired network, and the ability to both print from and scan to memory cards and USB memory keys. Most other features are useful for both home and home office.

Basics
Core multifunction printer (MFP) features in the XP-810 include printing and faxing from, as well as scanning to, a PC, even over a network, and working as a standalone fax machine and copier. Extensions to the core features include copying to and printing on printable optical discs.

Mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud, assuming you connect the printer directly to a network that's attached to the Internet, and printing from iOS and Android smartphones and tablets over Wi-Fi. And since the printer supports Wi-Fi Direct, you can print directly to it even if the printer isn't on a network.

In principle, being able to attach the printer to a network means that you could share it in a micro office, but the paper handling is a little meager for that. The 100-sheet capacity is enough for most personal use. For a shared printer, you'd likely run out often enough to make refilling the tray a minor annoyance.

One nice touch for paper handling is a single-sheet manual feed in the back that can handle letter-size paper, although the tray is hidden under a cover that makes it easy to miss. Another plus, for home use at least, is a second tray for up to 20 sheets of photo paper, so you can switch between plain paper and photos without having to change the paper in the main tray. The duplexer can also help save paper for both home and office use.

Paper handling for scanning is surprisingly capable. As you would expect, the ADF can handle legal-size paper, to supplement the letter-size flatbed. Beyond that, however, it offers an ample 30-sheet capacity, and it can duplex, by scanning one side, turning the page over, and scanning the other. Menu choices available through the 3.5-inch front-panel touch screen let you scan and fax two-sided pages as well as copy both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
Setting up the XP-810 was standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a wired network using its Ethernet port and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system.

Epson Expression Premium XP-810 Small-in-One

Speed is not a strong point. I clocked the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at a lackadaisical 3.6 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it significantly faster than the Epson XP-410, at 2.6 ppm, but a little slow for the price range. The Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J4710DW came in at 5.7 ppm, and the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J4610DW managed 5.6 ppm. Photo speed was also a little on the slow side, averaging 1 minute 20 seconds for a 4 by 6.

Output quality is more than acceptable across the board, with notably high-quality photos. Text falls at the high end of the range that includes the vast majority of inkjet MFPs. That still leaves it short of the quality I'd want for something that needs to look fully professional, like a resume, but good enough for most business and personal needs. Graphics was just a touch below par for an inkjet MFP, which makes it good enough for most business needs, including PowerPoint handouts and the like, unless you have an unusually critical eye.

Photos are a strong point. Colors in some of our test images were just a bit dark in terms of a hue-saturation-brightness model, but they were fully saturated, with the subtle gradation that gives a 3D look to rounded objects and with good enough contrast to make colors pop. Overall, the photos were a definitive step above what you'll get from most drugstore prints.

The photo quality obviously makes this printer a good choice if you're looking to print your own photos, while the low paper capacity limits it to light-duty use. Beyond that, it offers a more than acceptable level of quality across the board and a long list of features for both home and office—from duplex printing, to the duplexing ADF, to printing from cameras, and more. If you need a single MFP for the dual role of home and home-office printer, all this can make the Epson Expression Premium XP-810 Small-in-One a particularly good fit.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/0awYVSLU6jg/0,2817,2426184,00.asp
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Microsoft has slashed another $100 off the price of its original Surface Pro, so now you can get one

Microsoft has slashed another $100 off the price of its original Surface Pro, so now you can get one for $700 compared to $900 for the new Surface Pro 2.

NEC account manager charged in Cisco replacement parts fraud

A 40-year-old NEC account manager has been charged with mail fraud for allegedly obtaining replacement networking parts from Cisco using bogus names, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Craig A. Stanland of Stamford, Connecticut, is accused of making hundreds of false warranty claims online to Cisco to replace supposedly defective networking parts, which cost between $500 and $8,600. He was arrested on Oct. 1, and a criminal complaint was unsealed on Monday, the DOJ said in a news release.

Stanland is believed to be an enterprise account manager for NEC, a Cisco partner, who helped NEC customers with service contracts, including obtaining new parts, according to an FBI affidavit in Stanland's court file. Most of the Cisco products that were part of the investigation were originally sold to NEC, according to the document.

"As an NEC account manager, Stanland would have had access to those covered parts' serial numbers (here, the chassis serial numbers), which are necessary in order to purchase the service contract," the affidavit reads.

Stanland allegedly made between one and 10 claims a day between three and five days a week. Cisco shipped more than 400 parts to two post office boxes in Greenwich as well as Stanland's home and his wife's business in Brooklyn, prosecutors allege.

Stanland, who is accused of running the fraud for about a year, controlled 14 service contracts for Cisco networking parts. The aliases he used included Alan Johnston of Opex Solutions, Kyle Booker of KLB Networks, Steve Jones of SHO Networks, Robert Johnson of Adaptations and Paul Smith of PS Solutions, the DOJ said.

He was expected to return defective parts to Cisco in exchange for new ones, but instead sent back off-brand third-party parts or none at all, the DOJ alleged. Cisco usually shipped the replacement parts before receiving the defective ones, according to the affidavit.

Stanland, who is free on a US$100,000 bond, could face a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted of mail fraud.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2057520/nec-account-manager-charged-in-cisco-replacement-parts-fraud.html#tk.rss_all
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You Came, You Saw, You Did WHAT?: A Ribald Roman History

^{ADVISORY: This essay contains violent and sexual content that some readers may find offensive.}

Dirt for days. Around-the-clock degradation. Scandal too good to be true. Is this the latest from a publishing porn princess or prince? No: this lip-smacking low behavior is from Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars.

If someone sees me reading Suetonius, they give me credit for reading Latin, which I did in college. As a Classics minor at New York University, Washington Square College, and all of 20 years old, I longed to get credit for a Latin author whose style was not so torturous as the historian Tacitus'. Tacitus made me sweat. My boyfriend, down at University of North Carolina, was a chemistry Ph.D candidate and fluent in Latin. He suggested Suetonius.

Soon I was sweating for different reasons.

Suetonius Tranquillus, private secretary to Emperor Hadrian around 119-121 A.D., wrote down goings-on that make us look like pikers. Don't take my word for it; here's some material from Book V and Book VI.

Book V concerns the Emperor Claudius, Roman ruler from 41-54 A.D. Suetonius starts by accusing Claudius' father, Drusus, of being the product of adulterous intercourse. The author can't wait to let you know that Claudius' own mother thought him dull and his grandmother treated him with contempt. He lays it on even thicker by telling us that Claudius' sister prayed that the Roman people would be spared the misfortune of her brother as emperor.

Our author is just warming up. He accuses Claudius of drunkenness, gambling, laziness, silliness and hanging out with a low-rent crowd.

Once Claudius becomes emperor, his bad traits could flower. Then, as now, sex sells, and the reader can wallow in it. Suetonius was surprised that Claudius evidenced a wild passion for women but not a jot for men. Back then, there was no concept of heterosexual or homosexual. Sex was sex: Have at it. But Claudius denied himself the pleasure of half the human race. Well, there's no accounting for taste.

As you might suspect, Claudius was safely dead before Suetonius decided to tell all. But before he died, Claudius did his future biographer a great favor: he adopted Nero as his successor.

Now our author is truly in his element. He tells us, practically sotto voce — you can hear him whispering in your ear — that Nero was always cruel. He killed one of his freedman for not drinking as much as the poor sot was ordered. He ran over a boy, killing him, for the pleasure of it. He gouged out a knight's eye. He cheated bankers — as opposed to the now-common reverse. He even cheated the winners of the chariot races he sponsored.

Rita Mae Brown, a screenwriter and poet as well as a novelist, is the author of Rubyfruit Jungle and multiple mystery series.

Courtesy of Oxford University Press

Rita Mae Brown, a screenwriter and poet as well as a novelist, is the author of Rubyfruit Jungle and multiple mystery series.

Courtesy of Oxford University Press

That's just for starters. Nero was charged with incest with his mother and his sister. Nero wanted to be loved as an entertainer, and our author is horrified at such a common ambition. Nero even entered chariot races and won — despite falling out of the chariot.

Now come the exciting vices. Nero, who became emperor at age 17, gave banquets where harlots waited upon the guests and himself hand and foot — as well as elsewhere. He seduced freeborn boys, married women and even a Vestal Virgin, Rubria. His roving eye landed on the priestess, and his body with it.

One of his more imaginative escapades involved castrating a beautiful young man, Sporus, whom he then took to wife. Kissing his wife in public was the least of it.

Suetonius reports, without a shred of disbelief, that Nero would be released from a cage. Wearing a wild animal skin, he would savage men and women tied to posts. Doryphorus, his freedman, accompanied him on his feigned bestiality. Nero married Doryphorus, too, but this time, the Emperor wanted to be the wife. He made people listen to him being "deflowered" on his wedding night. No mention of what Sporus thought.

From distinctive sex acts, Suetonius switches to murders, political intrigue, botched matricide and then a success at wiping out the maternal unit. She was so violent herself that Suetonius doesn't pretend to be horrified.

Oh, Nero also lost Syria. Perhaps nothing is new under the sun.

Non-stop rapes, murders, castrations and sex with multitudes fill the pages. As for Nero's death, best you read that extraordinary episode yourself: I'll just note that Sporus was with him at the end.

Suetonius' underlying theme — left unstated, out of credit for his readers' intelligence — is the devastating erosion of total power to the human psyche. Few rulers have overcome the washing away of reality, and in his work Suetonius makes this hideously clear. Without restraint, honest debate and consideration for human life and economy, not only will the person in power be destroyed — finally so will the state, the civilization.

Any government, any individual, any people can forget this central lesson at any time. Chances are they will lack the imagination of the Caesars in their demise, but you can't have everything. If you're going down, at least it should be a vivid spectacle.

And what a spectacle Suetonius gives us! How delicious to wallow in constant erections — really, it does make a girl wonder. The aging Caesars accomplished all this without Viagra: we do have a lot to learn. A guilty-pleasure read from the second century? Oh, yes. We can thank Suetonius for disguising the most salacious gossip as history — still a good formula for a bestseller.

Rita Mae Brown's latest novel is The Litter of the Law.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/27/240556239/guilty-pleasure-lives-of-the-caesars?ft=1&f=1032
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Teen stabbed Mass. teacher then went to movie, police say

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Massachusetts teenager who has been charged with murdering a 24-year-old math teacher at his high school used a box cutter to stab the woman, then disposed of her body and went to the movies, local media reported on Thursday.

The 14-year-old, Philip Chism, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to the charge of murdering Colleen Ritzer, whose body was discovered in the woods behind his high school in Danvers, Massachusetts, some 20 miles north of Boston.

Chism apparently used a box cutter to stab and cut Ritzer in a second-floor bathroom of the school, the Boston Globe reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement official.

After dumping Ritzer's body, Chism went on to buy a ticket for a 4:30 p.m. screening of the Woody Allen film "Blue Jasmine," a law enforcement source told the Boston Herald.

A spokeswoman for Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett declined to comment on any details of the case.

The attack marked the second killing of a U.S. teacher by a student this week, following an incident in Nevada in which a 12-year-old boy armed with a handgun shot dead a teacher and wounded two schoolmates before turning his gun on himself.

Police in Danvers began investigating the incident after neither Chism nor Ritzer returned to their homes after school on Tuesday. They had initially issued a missing child report for Chism.

When a search for Ritzer turned up blood in the bathroom at Danvers High School late Tuesday, the police began a criminal investigation. Chism was found walking along a highway a few miles from the school shortly after midnight Wednesday morning.

Prosecutors charged Chism as an adult, which allowed them to release his name and could mean that he would face a longer potential sentence in an adult prison rather than a juvenile facility if he is convicted.

Chism, who played on the Danvers High School junior varsity soccer team, had recently moved to the New England town from Tennessee.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; editing by Andrew Hay)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/massachusetts-teen-pleads-not-guilty-murdering-teacher-061454309.html
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Report: NSA Spied on German Chancellor Before She Even Took Office

Well this puts a new wrinkle on things — according to a new report from Der Spiegel, the NSA has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone since 2002. That's long before she became chancellor, though it's unclear how deep the snooping went.

Partying for Halloween tonight? Make sure to snap some #LloydOWeen photos for the contest!

#LloydOWeen

Don't forget, while you're out partying this weekend for Halloween, we're having a contest! You can win some awesome prizes, so make sure you read the entry requirements below, and send in your photos! You don't have to be in costume this year, but we need to see a phone or tablet in the picture, so don't miss that part! We have a few great entries already, but we want to see more, so make sure to get yours in!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/vaYPNHGKgTI/story01.htm
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