New Pentium MMX processors and economic printing mode
New Pentium MMX processors and economic printing mode
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Unwittingly, I left you with yet another puzzle
last week. A friend from Surabaya, Doug Boyne, faxed me and
reminded me that I had inadvertently failed to explain how I got
the memory address 000CC000-000CCIFF that suddenly jump-started
SNI's SCENIC Multimedia eXtension Board.
Actually, in my first report I did tell you that I spent hours
trying to find the right memory address. I guess I must have
nudged too much, or too little, to get the 64k free memory space.
I must have done it hundreds of times before I accidentally
hit the right spot. Honestly speaking, I didn't have the
technical knowledge to know exactly where the device driver
should be mounted, so it was basically a trial and error process.
And, as our friend Doug said, sometimes the trial and error
procedure works, sometimes it doesn't. But, at least you know now
what may be causing the problem -- particularly with the Plug `n
play feature standing in the way.
Just remember that, as Doug also admits, it will be a lot of
fun once the thing starts to work.
Now that you already know a little bit about system resources
and their conflict resolution in Windows 95, here's the latest
news from Intel Corp. that you may also be interested in.
We all have read about the fastest notebook computers on
planet earth. Some of us may have even played around with them.
Most likely, these so-called desktop replacements run on the
Pentium 233 MHz processor with MMX Technology. Well, last week
Intel announced the arrival of their two new babies: The 166 MHz
and the 266 MHz Pentium with MMX for mobile computers.
Don't be surprised to see a 166 MHz MMX being announced as a
"new" processor, because it is.
The old 166 MHz MMX processor that we saw in the Armada 7350T
that I reviewed not very long ago was a different one. That one
was still manufactured using Intel's .35 micron technology, while
the new reincarnation is a .25 micron version.
The fresh 166 MHz MMX processor consumed less power than
its .35 micron brother. Because of these characteristics, you can
expect to find this chip in mini notebooks or palmtop computers.
It operates at an internal core voltage of 1.8 volts.
Intel also targets it to those who need a low cost but
powerful enough notebook.
For comparison, the 266 MHz MMX processor operates at an
internal core voltage of 2.0 volts. You won't really see a
breakneck speed difference between the new one and its 233 MHz
predecessor.
However, the performance increase will certainly catch the
attention of those who will never settle for less than the
fastest -- and, of course, those who are not affected by the
current monetary crisis.
Already Dell Computer Corp. has grabbed the newcomer and put
it in its new Inspiron 3000 M266XT.
According to a news release that I received last week, Dell
puts a 13.3" active matrix XGA display, 32 MB of SDRAM, a 3.2 GB
hard disk, a 20X CD-ROM drive and a 56K modem.
Dell says that the performance improvement is between 7
percent to 10 percent over their 233 MHz based Inspiron notebook.
Save ink
While the lightning fast notebook may not for everybody at
this point in time, here's a small tip to save you a little
money.
First, let me tell you what happened to me last week. The
black ink for my HP 1600C ran dry. I realized that this happened
at a really inopportune time, but I still couldn't believe the
price I had to pay for a new cartridge.
Istidata, the HP dealer where I always buy HP consumables,
charged me Rp 258,300 for it based on their exchange rate of Rp
9,000 per US$. I was dumbfounded.
I was prepared to pay twice the Rp 80,000 or so that I used to
pay for this cartridge, but when I learned I had to pay more than
three times as much, I became so frustrated that I thought of
just walking away.
But as I needed to print out some work, I had no choice. I
paid the money with the Idul Fitri allowance that I had just
received and grabbed the ink cartridge. In all fairness, it was
not the store's fault that its price had skyrocketed.
But, as soon as I had inserted the new ink cartridge, I did
what I thought all of us should do in times like this: Change the
default print mode to EconoFast.
This mode will not give you razor-sharp printout, but it will
give you more printed pages for your money as it uses less ink.
Here's what I did: I clicked on the Start button, Settings and
then Printers.
When the Printers folder appears, I clicked on the HP DeskJet
1600C ColorSmart icon.
ColorSmart is the name of the printer driver that this printer
uses. This will give me the ColorSmart dialog box.
I clicked again on Printer, and then Properties. When I got
the dialog box, I clicked on Details tab.
I clicked on the Setup button found on the bottom, and this
gave me the Setup HP DeskJet 1600C ColorSmart on LPT1 dialog box.
I chose the EconoFast under Print Quality, and I clicked on the
OK buttons.
From now on this will be the default quality. It may not save
too much ink, but it will certainly postpone my next trip to the
store.
Laser
Now, if you use an inkjet printer -- no matter what the brand
is -- check whether you can set the default printing mode.
Chances are that the procedure isn't much different if you happen
to be using inkjet printers from Canon, Epson or HP. Look in the
Properties dialog boxes.
The same savings can be done with laser printers, too. Use the
draft mode to save on toner, as toner cartridges still have to be
imported and their prices are in U.S. dollars. At any time you
want to print out your resume or sales proposals, you can change
the printing mode to a higher quality in order to get crisp
characters and graphics on to the paper.
Before I ran out of ink, I had always enjoyed printing out
interesting Web pages in full color with my 1600C. Thanks to our
monetary woes, however, I have stopped doing it.
From now on I selectively use the Normal print quality, and it
will be long before I'll ever use the Presentation quality of the
1600C. You, too, can save yourself or your office a lot of rupiah
if you set each of the printers you use to its econo-mode.