Posts by S

Norton no longer available to Comcast

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For many years now a  benefit of the Comcast Internet home service was that they offered Norton Anti-Virus software as a free product download for their customers.  This was a great savings that went largely unnoticed in the “internet pricing war between Comcast and Verizon”.   As the years went on this seemed to be less and less published and become slightly more difficult to obtain and use. 

As of January 1, 2021 it appears that Comcast has now officially retired this benefit and it’s no longer available.  See the details published by Comcast and Norton below:

What is next?

Well, for those that had Norton installed because you were a Comcast customer, you have these choices:

  1. Upgrade your current Norton package to the Comcast discounted rate provided by Norton
    1. This will require you to create an account on the Norton site, if you don’t already have an account
    2. Norton is offering a discount rate for the first year, and then subsequent years are billed at a higher rate. This is standard practice for Norton however as they always offer a lower first-year rate
  2. Remove Norton and go with a Free Antivirus software
    1. There are 2 good products for anti-virus software: Avira and AVG
    2. These work very well and are near the top of the list for tools to use
    3. The downside of these tools is that when you select the free product you will find they bombard you daily with pop-ups in the lower-left corner of your screen for opportunities to upgrade to their paid versions.  The paid version is not necessary, but they will continue to show the pop-ups to try and convince you. If you are disciplined with checking out the ad and hitting dismiss, then this works well. If you rather not be bothered with these ads, then you can get tired of them quickly!

If you go with Norton, what should I get?

I would recommend 2 choices based on how many Windows PC’s you need to protect:

  • 1 Computer – Go with Norton Antivirus Plus
  • 2 or more computers – Go with Norton 360 Deluxe.  This offers protection for up to 5 computers

Hopefully this guide will help you get your machine straightened out. If not, give me a call and I can remote into your computer and get it all fixed up.  It’s generally about a half hour process (per computer) for me to remote in and remedy the situation.

Printers

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In my experience over the past 15+ years of servicing home users I have had the luxury, privilege, (or misfortune) of working on many types of printers as well as many different types of issues. Some of the more popular printers include HP, Canon, Brother, Lexmark, Kodak, Xerox and others.

In addition, I have seen a lot of uses for printers, one of the biggest uses has been greeting cards! I have a lot of older customers that like to customize their greeting cards and print their own cards out. This is a popular use.

I get the question all the time about ‘what printer should I get?”, therefore I thought I would put together this article to give my viewpoints on printers. Hopefully this helps.

There are 2 main types of printers:

INKJET PRINTER

these are the most common printers you see offered because they are cheap printers. Key points for these include:

  • cheap upfront cost. These can be free when you buy a computer or start at $50 and up
  • they use multiple cartridges that cost anywhere from $35 and up
  • these cartridges usually only print around 500-700 copies (if your lucky)
  • the life expectancy of these are low. You must use them often and don’t expect them to last more than a few months. If you go away and don’t use them for a month or two it’s possible for them to dry up and no longer work

LASER PRINTER

These are less visible when you look at printer deals or if you go to the store and look at printers. The reason is they cost more money upfront. Not only do they cost more, but replacement cartridges cost more also.

  • Cartridges will cost more, about $75 and up
  • However you got about 1500 to 3000 pages for a single cartridge
  • Plus the cartridge NEVER goes bad. You can not use that cartridge for a year and then print and it will be fine, no issues with printing since it’s a dry powder that is used to generate the print
  • The quality is MUCH higher than inkjet. The quality of page is excellent

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

When buying a printer, consider these options as it will determine what is best for your usage:

Type of Connection

  • how will you connect printer to device(s)?
  • If you want to connect multiple devices to that printer, and you want the easiest solution, then go with wifi printer.
  • If you only have one device and the printer is located next to it, then wifi connection is not needed. You can connect a cable from PC to printer and you are fine.
  • If your techie, and the printer is located near the router, then you can select a printer that has Ethernet and connect it to the printer and then devices can be setup to see the printer via the network

Printer capabilities

If you want to have the ability to make copies or scan (or even fax!) than go with an “All in One” machine. These have those other abilities built in. One option to consider if replacing a printer and you have an all-in-one machine already and space in your house is to keep your all in one machine for scanning and get a laser jet for printing. This lets you find a less expensive laser printer that is a printer only.

Color or Black & White?

Do you need color or is black and white sufficient? If color is not needed, there is a big price difference. Black and white laser printers are a lot less to purchase than color printers. Plus when you replace cartridges you will find a big price advantage of buying just 1 black cartridge instead of 4 color cartridges.

What do I recommend?

Everyone has a unique situation to what they use and what they need. However in general I find I almost always recommend a Laser Printer. The quality is always far superior, they last longer, the cost for the supplies is more upfront, but they last longer. I prefer to buy cartridges 1x a year at most and sometimes more like every 18 months. I can’t recall any time that I have recommended an ink jet printer.

As for brand, I usually recommend HP, Canon, Brother, Lexmark. They are all the same, not much different. And no one is better than another.

For more detailed information from a good 3rd party is Tom’s Guide to Hardware. They have been around for years and offer solid advice. Check out their blog entry on differences here.

Printer Issues

Having a Printer Problem? There are many reasons why your printer might not be working. Here is a sample checklist we recommend you walk through before calling for service:

  1. Is it out of ink? Make sure you check ink levels
  2. If it’s an inkjet printer and there are more than 1 cartridge, then all of those cartridges must be at an acceptable level. IF just 1 is low/empty many printers will not print till all cartridges are at acceptable levels
  3. Have you tried a new set of cartridges? I have found MANY times the cartridges are not working and replacing with new cartridges solved the issue. This is frustrating (and expensive) but I can count at least 10x in which that was the issue. In fact, there have been many times where BRAND NEW cartridges were opened and did not work. A SECOND new set was purchased and this 2nd new set worked fine. So it did not pay for me to come and visit since it was just a defective set of cartridges, that happened to be new.
  4. Is it a wifi printer? If so, you will want to confirm both the printer and laptop are setup on the same wifi network. If Comcast is your provider, I have often found the laptop might move to the Xfinity wifi that is pushed out from the Comcast router and therefore the computer was connected to wifi, but it is not going to communicate to a printer on the other wifi network.
  5. Is there an issue with the software drivers? IF the above are confirmed as not issues, then remove the printer from the computer and re-add it and re-install the drivers.

These are some of the common issues with printers. If you get through this whole list and still have an issue, the problem could actually be the printer has just gone bad (techy term there!!).

I am happy to make a house call to take a further look, however, I like to caution folks that printers are not the highest quality item and if the printer was less than $100, it sometimes does not make sense to for me to make a house call and charge you when buying a new printer will almost always resolve the issue. I like to be upfront on printer issues and I often feel bad servicing and charging when sometimes it’s almost best to just buy a new one. It’s such a shame we have those situations, but printers are not the most well-built items.