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Canon BJ-30 Bubble Jet Printer

A few days ago we received a Canon BJ-30 Bubble jet printer as part of a group of printer donations. We tested this tiny printer which measures about 1 foot wide by 1/2 foot long when the lid is closed. Amazingly the donated printer still contained ink. Sadly it seems that Canon has discontinued making any drivers or information for Windows available on their web site. We tested the printer under Ubuntu Linux version 10.04 and it printed a test page flawlessly (we even got a full tank of ink). I called our favourite ink re-filler and found that the do indeed still carry the cartridges for this portable printer. We looked around for information about the BJ-30 and discovered that this tiny printer is 720dpi x 360 dpi, although we suspect that number is a software-interpolation number that depends on a Windows driver. As anyone can see from our screen shot above the printer seems to print just fine. The biggest downside to the printer we felt was the lack of a USB port, and the...
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Retro games at Computer Recycling

From Hardware The past couple of months have brought a lot of changes to The Working Centre's Computer Recycling project. One of those changes is the addition of a working Vic 20 (we also have a Commodore 64) and an Atari 800. The Vic 20 is on display and anyone is welcome to drop in and play one of the games we have on cartridge for it. Currently we have the following games: * Donkey Kong * Pac Man * Spills N' Fills * Pole Position * Home Babysitter * MasterType * Garden Wars We do have a Commodore 1541 disk drive for the Vic 20 and a tape cassette drive, but at the moment we're collecting software on cartridge. The Atari 800 is not set up yet. We're looking for a small 19" or less television to hook the Atari to.
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Palm TX

In today's flooded netbook environment I wouldn't buy a Palm TX. While the TX is typically less expensive (I think mine was approximately $299CDN new a couple of years ago) it isn't quite as functional, especially compared to the Linux-based netbooks. Here are a few problems the TX suffers from: * Proprietary Operating System - While there are development tools on Windows and Linux for Palm OS, you're still locked into an operating system that you have a limited environment to develop for. Steps have been taken by a small group to create a Linux-based OS for the Palm TX but it lacks some necessary functionality (e.g. Wifi). * Limited wifi security without buying an option. The Palm TX doesn't do WPA2 wifi security out of the box, which means it's insecure out of the box. Palm calls the paid upgrade an "Enterprise Security" feature. The upgrade isn't terribly expensive, only $10 last I looked, but it no longer appears to be available on Palm's s...
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