So it appears that Microsoft removed the ability to scan directly into a document in Office 2007.
It’s a pretty silly move I suppose, so I tried to work out a way to bring the functionality back, first of all, here’s how Microsoft suggests you should do it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924462
Step 1: Use the software that was included with your scanner to scan and save the image to your computer.
… Yeah, no thanks.
Here’s two actual solutions to the problem:
Option 1: Using a Key Combo
Install your scanner drivers as per normal.
In Word, press the alt key and type ips (note: don’t hold them down or it won’t work, just type out ips).
Word will then pop up asking you what scanner you want to use. It didn’t bring up the scanner interface on the machine I was working with, it just went right ahead and scanned the whole document, so this may not be the best solution for some. Note that the next solution is more difficult and does exactly the same thing as this one.
This option is a lot more complicated, make sure you get all the steps right and in order! When you’re done you’ll have a button on your Insert tab of the Ribbon.
Open Word and go to the View Tab then click on Macros.
Give the macro a name (eg. Scan)
Enter the following text EXACTLY: Application.WordBasic.InsertImagerScan
Save and Close the Window
Right click anywhere on the Ribbon and Select “Customise the Ribbon”
On the right hand pane, click on the Insert category and click New Group.
Rename the Group to anything you like (eg. Scan)
On the Left Hand Pane, Change the drop down box at the top to Macros then select the Macro you made in step 2-4 and click the Add button (so it appears underneath the scan group you made in Step 6.
Rename it to something better like “Scan Document” and pick a pretty picture for it.
Click Okay and you’re done!
Now you can just click the button to Scan a document. It’s exactly the same as the alt-ips option above though, but might be easier for people to remember so they can click the button.
EDIT: If you’re looking for a qualified driver for the Xerox 204A, use the Brother HL-2040 driver linked above. The driver on the the Xerox site for the 204A is not a Windows Qualified driver and was having issues with iPrint for us.
Another Edit: If you’re having issues with the Xerox 204A printers, you can do a full factory reset on them by doing the following:
1. Turn the printer off
2. Hold down the Go button and turn the printer on. The lights will go solid after a few seconds with the Ready light off.
3. Let go of the go button, then press it 6 times. The printer will then start normally and be reset.
There’s a surprising amount of information that people don’t know about USB Sticks, a lot of people have wrong information about it. I’d like to write this post to explain to everyone some common misconceptions about USB sticks, what to look for when buying a USB stick and some cool tips for making them better.
Also, I just bought myself a new USB Stick and it took me a few days to find the one I wanted (yes, days, days of hunting to find the best one for me).
Common Misconceptions about USB Sticks
You don’t need to Safely Remove (or Eject) a USB Stick.
False, technically…
When you go to Safely Remove a USB Stick, your computer will make sure that nothing is doing anything with the drive. If you’re copying data to the USB Stick, it could corrupt files that are transferring to it. But here’s the big one: USB Drives typically use a thing called FAT32 to store their data, this is so the drive will work on both Macs and PCs. 99% of the time when you don’t safely eject, everything is fine, but there’s a special part of the drive that stores where all the files on your drive are, if this gets corrupted (by unplugging it at just the wrong moment), all your data will be lost.
USB Sticks have no moving parts, so they can’t break.
False.
I’ve seen many USB Sticks fail, sometimes it’s quite sudden and your drive will simply just stop working. There’s nothing you can do to save the data. If you’re really lucky and have a lot of money, you could get a professional to try to recover the data (costing you upwards of $10,000).
If you notice your USB Stick doing something odd like not being recognised by the computer or suddenly dropping out and not working until you unplug/replug it in, stop using it and buy a new one.
USB Sticks can’t survive a trip through the washing machine
False
They totally can (usually). If yours ends up through the wash, let it dry out for at least a few days (don’t even dare plugging it in until it’s 100% dry, inside and out). If you’ve got some silica gel (those little anti moisture packets), put it in an air tight tupperware container with it. Rice works too.
You can also get waterproof USB Sticks.
Buying a USB Stick
There’s a lot of different USB Sticks you can buy. Try to steer clear of the novelty ones firstly, they’re pretty much the cheapest USB Stick whacked into a fancy case.
Speed
USB Sticks range from very slow (2-3MB/s transfer speed) to really quick (over 100MB/s). Most USB Drives on the market are USB2, this means they’ve got a theoretical maximum speed of about 60MB/s (480mbit USB2), but you’ll most likely never see any over 35MB/s. The latest USB sticks coming out now are USB3 sticks, these ones have speeds of over 100MB/s (in theory) but you must have USB3 on your computer to use it (not all new computers even have this yet, so it’s unlikely you would have USB3).
Does the speed really matter? Yes. Take one of the better Kingston USB Sticks for example, it has 20MB/s read and 10MB/s Write. To copy a 1gb Movie onto the drive, it will take you almost 2 minutes. On the other hand, the Patriot SuperSonic at 70MB/s Write speed: 15 seconds (or, at USB2 speeds: 31seconds).
Basically: There are a lot of really slow drives out there, ones that make you want to tear your eyes out as it trudges along at 2-3MB/s (yes, there are a lot of drives this slow out there).
Size (Memory)
At the moment (June 2011), USB Drives go up to 128GB, this is pretty cool, but really expensive at the same time. The sweet spot is around 16gb ($35) or if you need something a bit bigger, 32gb to 64gb ($100 and $200).
Size (Physical)
This one is more important than you think. The USB Drive has to fit with other USB devices plugged in next to it (this is really, really important). There’s nothing more annoying than having to unplug a bunch of other devices so you can plug in your USB Drive.
Keep an eye out for the USB3 drives, I’ve only seen one that has a small enough footprint to fit next to other drives (the Patriot Supersonic Drive – See Image on Right).
Design
There’s a whole heap of different ways they build these things, fancy caps on the end, flip out covers, cool clicky bits to make it click into place… Most of them suck though.
The ones that click (you push the end until the USB bit is clicked into place) seem fine at first, but if you’re trying to get it into a tight USB port, it’ll click back.
Caps can (and will) get lost.
The swivel USB sticks are good because you can’t lose the cap, but I’m yet to see a decent USB stick (according to other attributes) in this style.
The screw cap USB Sticks take FOREVER to unscrew.
One of the best ones I’ve got has a normal removable cap, but the lanyard bit for it goes through the cap as well as the USB, so they can’t get separated.
The other thing to look at is the physical toughness of the drive, most of them are plastic, but you can buy rubber ones that are more shock proof and waterproof and metal ones as well.
Encryption
You can get some USB Sticks that use Hardware Encryption to encrypt the data on the drive.
In short: Don’t bother, unless you’re a crazy encryption nuthead, the encryption will only slow the drive down and increase the cost. I would suggest getting any USB drive and using something like Truecrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/) to encrypt the data on the drive.
Warranty
If you’re going to spend over $100 on a USB drive, check the warranty! Most come with 3-5 year warranties.
Special “Bonuses”
Some USB Sticks ship with a thing called the U3 System (or something else, there’s a couple different ones), supposedly trying to make your life easier. 95% of the time it slows you down and annoys the crap out of you. If you’ve got U3 installed on the drive, go here for instructions on how to remove it (http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2550/~/removing-u3-launchpad-on-a-pc). If it’s not U3 and something else, google something like: Remove <insert name of thing here>
There should be some results on how to get rid of it 🙂
USB Sticks are really easy to lose and very hard to work out who owns it. Make a text file called “If Lost Open Me!.txt” and leave it on the USB Drive, include your contact details and phone number so whoever finds the stick can return it to you!
Autorun File Trickery
On Windows Machines, they will read a file called autorun.inf when you plug a USB Stick in, inside this file you can include details like the default action (Windows XP only), the icon and the name of the USB Stick (this is separate from the name of the drive and lets you give it longer, case sensitive names).
Note that this doesn’t work on fully up to date machines as Microsoft have disabled the functionality (what a buzz kill).
This has the added bonus of working as an indication that a virus is on your USB Stick: If you notice that your fancy icon and all that is missing, it’s likely that a virus has replaced your autorun.inf file. Go check it and make sure it’s not trying to run something else!
Also: If you don’t use this trick and you see a file on your USB called autorun.inf, get rid of it. Alternately, a folder called “System” is also a part of a virus, delete that too!
To make an autorun file for yourself, download this file and edit the autorun.inf file in your favourite text editor (leave a comment if you need help!).
BACK UP YOUR USB STICK
Seriously, if your only copy of your thesis, photos or any other important documents is on your USB Stick BACK IT UP NOW.
Always Always Always keep multiple copies of your data.
Things will fail, you are not an exception to the rule. If you’ve never had a data failure before, that doesn’t make you immune to them later.
Think I missed something? Got something to share? Liked the Article? Leave a Comment below!
This article explains how to run a ping test on a Mac and save it to a file so you can pass the file onto another person or to your ISP. It was originally written for people living in Australia, but will work fine for anyone anywhere around the world (just replace pacific.net.au for another website that’s closer to you).
Also note that this information only applies to Mac computers and will not work on a Windows machine.
Tired of looking at the words Novell plastered all over the screens of your computer when they’re not logged in? This guide will show you how to change both the banner for the “Press Ctrl-Alt-Del” screen as well as the screen where you enter your login details. Continue reading →
I bought myself an Arudiuo, it cost about $30 and basically lets me prototype electronics. It gives me a whole heap of input and outputs that I can use to input stuff into the computer, output stuff from the computer or just have it running by itself.
The first project I built was just some LED’s and flashing them, this second project is an 8×8 LED Matrix that I bought online off ebay. It cost me $16AUD with free postage for 10 of them.
This installer is a customised installer for Acrobat Reader 9.2.
It has updates disabled, Acrobat.com features disabled, Customer Improvement thing disabled, Autoaccepts the EULA, unattended and very fast install and all installs through a single doubleclick.
UPDATE: 29/1/17 – This article is way out of date. Phone companies here basically give you free calls and all that for <$30 a month. Leaving the article here for posterity, but don’t trust it 😉
I’ve put together a quick little spreadsheet you can use for comparing different phone plans to eachother. One of the tricks the phone companies use is they say “You pay $49 and get $330 worth of credit!” to make it sound like their phone plan is much better. However to make up for this, the calling rates are higher.
With this spreadsheet it tells you exactly how many minutes of talk time you get on your phone, ontop of that, if you enter how long your average phone call is, it will work out how many minutes of talk time you get once flagfall is called into effect.
One other great thing it does is give each plan a point rating that factors in minutes, texting cost, flagfall as well as the data plan.
Instructions are in the spreadsheet as well as 2 sample plans from Optus and Telstra.
