Random Tech Questions you want answered.

We have a LexMark cX510DE laser printer. But when my wife or I try printing PDF's, it often goes extremely slowly. Funnily enough, it's extra painful when the PDF is opened in SumatraPDF. When I look at the size of the printer queue, the numbers seem extremely inflated as well. A 4MB file comes to 36MB in the print queue, a 9KB file becomes 500KB, etc. When I open the PDF in Edge or Chrome, it still goes slower than expected and there is still some inflation, but not as bad.

I guess this ticket is 'non-critical, still able to work' as we could of course open any PDF in Chrome or Edge. But it seems like such a random and weird issue that I was wondering if anyone could shed a light on this?

PurEvil wrote:

This may help.

Thanks! I'll try that.

dejanzie wrote:

We have a LexMark cX510DE laser printer. But when my wife or I try printing PDF's, it often goes extremely slowly. Funnily enough, it's extra painful when the PDF is opened in SumatraPDF. When I look at the size of the printer queue, the numbers seem extremely inflated as well. A 4MB file comes to 36MB in the print queue, a 9KB file becomes 500KB, etc. When I open the PDF in Edge or Chrome, it still goes slower than expected and there is still some inflation, but not as bad.

I guess this ticket is 'non-critical, still able to work' as we could of course open any PDF in Chrome or Edge. But it seems like such a random and weird issue that I was wondering if anyone could shed a light on this?

PDFs are generally pretty slow to print. Depending on the compression used they will be much larger in RAM than they are on hard drive and it can take even higher end printers time to convert them into printable format. I used to work at a printing place and part of my job now is managing a print center in a college along with doing IT and AV stuff and I have seen a badly done PDF turn our super fast printer into a 4 pages per minute printer.

Is there an Android equivalent of the iPod Touch? No phone call or data support. Basically a small cheap WiFi only tablet.

The closest thing without cellular would probably be the Fire HD tablets, though I'd imagine you want something smaller than a 7-8" screen. I'm pretty sure Apple actually holds a patent that prevents other companies from making an iPod Touch alternative.

pandasuit wrote:

Is there an Android equivalent of the iPod Touch? No phone call or data support. Basically a small cheap WiFi only tablet.

Nothing that small, no, and it is really small.

Something that fits in a kids pocket yeah. A 4“ or 5” Fire Tablet would be about perfect if it existed.

I expect the answer is to buy a cheap phone and just don’t use a SIM card. Are cheap Android phones underpowered or some other variation of outdated?

There are dozens of cheap Android phones, hard to make a universal claim like that. Some are definitely unpowered and outdated.

There are cheap small Android tablets, just mostly no-name brands. Here is an example that sounds pretty much like what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-AGP...

LeapingGnome wrote:

There are dozens of cheap Android phones, hard to make a universal claim like that. Some are definitely unpowered and outdated.

There are cheap small Android tablets, just mostly no-name brands. Here is an example that sounds pretty much like what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-AGP...

For that much money why not a Motorola e6? Nice new phone with a warranty, 100 bucks straight from Moto.

Get the tiny Palm Android phone

pandasuit wrote:

Is there an Android equivalent of the iPod Touch? No phone call or data support. Basically a small cheap WiFi only tablet.

The moto g does have phone and data support but you don't have to use it. The phone comes unlock for $199 or did 3 months ago.

If you're going to spend $199, might as well just get an iPod Touch and have it be exactly what you want.

Since iPods are considered outdated now, you might be able to get an almost-new one for a whole lot less.

dejanzie wrote:

We have a LexMark cX510DE laser printer. But when my wife or I try printing PDF's, it often goes extremely slowly. Funnily enough, it's extra painful when the PDF is opened in SumatraPDF. When I look at the size of the printer queue, the numbers seem extremely inflated as well. A 4MB file comes to 36MB in the print queue, a 9KB file becomes 500KB, etc. When I open the PDF in Edge or Chrome, it still goes slower than expected and there is still some inflation, but not as bad.

I guess this ticket is 'non-critical, still able to work' as we could of course open any PDF in Chrome or Edge. But it seems like such a random and weird issue that I was wondering if anyone could shed a light on this?

From the support page, it looks like it supports PCL and Postscript. If you're using the PCL driver, try switching to the Postscript driver.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I have a 65” Samsung TV, nothing special, but it’s our main one in the house. I bought it around 2015 or 2016 for $1200. It’s been acting up lately, turning off and then on again without being prompted.

Does TV repair happen anymore? Is it worth it? I could probably get a better one for $600 now.

Not sure if anyone cares but now I doubt the TV is the issue. I think my giant stupid house, which is about to be someone else’s giant stupid problem, is overloading the electrical delivery. My 5 month old LG is now doing the same thing in a different area of the house. The problems started when the air conditioning units came out, and now that we’ve had a mini heat wave, the problems are back.

Will a NAS be a good idea to back up:

1. photos
2. files like PDF, docs etc?
3. Music

and... be a plex server at the same time or not a good idea?

I have my files, photos etc, scattered throughout Desktop, external small HDDs and the such.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Not sure if anyone cares but now I doubt the TV is the issue.

Dumb question: Is your TV plugged into a surge protector? If not, try one. If so, maybe try a UPS with a voltage regulator. Or just change houses, ya know.

Darkhaund wrote:

Will a NAS be a good idea to back up:

1. photos
2. files like PDF, docs etc?
3. Music

and... be a plex server at the same time or not a good idea?

I have my files, photos etc, scattered throughout Desktop, external small HDDs and the such.

Check out The Data Backup Thread for loads of helpful tips and tricks. I don't remember whether it specifically covers Plex, but backup strategies are there a-plenty.

Thank you

Blind_Evil wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I have a 65” Samsung TV, nothing special, but it’s our main one in the house. I bought it around 2015 or 2016 for $1200. It’s been acting up lately, turning off and then on again without being prompted.

Does TV repair happen anymore? Is it worth it? I could probably get a better one for $600 now.

Not sure if anyone cares but now I doubt the TV is the issue. I think my giant stupid house, which is about to be someone else’s giant stupid problem, is overloading the electrical delivery. My 5 month old LG is now doing the same thing in a different area of the house. The problems started when the air conditioning units came out, and now that we’ve had a mini heat wave, the problems are back.

Some power companies will upgrade your power delivery for free. It doesn't take them that long (typically an hour or so, running a thicker cable from the pole), and they can sell you more power that way, so they consider it a smart investment.

Not all will, however. And you may not care anymore if you've sold the place.

Guys, quick question.. my gaming desktop has a small 120 GB SSD.. and it is almost full. If I guy a 500 GB SSD, is there a quick way to migrate to the new the drive.. or do i need to "re-install" everything.. windows... games etc?

Darkhaund wrote:

Guys, quick question.. my gaming desktop has a small 120 GB SSD.. and it is almost full. If I guy a 500 GB SSD, is there a quick way to migrate to the new the drive.. or do i need to "re-install" everything.. windows... games etc?

If you download Clonezilla and write it to a USB boot flash drive, you should be able to hook both drives up and clone one to the other in less than an hour. Then just remove the 120GB and set the BIOS to boot off the 500GB.

Personally I always use upgrades as an excuse to clean everything up and start fresh, but then I only have my OS and some programs on my SSD, and everything else gets stored on other drives. And most of my games are through Steam, so that's just pointing Steam to the right folders and it picks everything up.

Thank you for the info!

I dropped a new TB SSD into my machine last year, and exclusively use it for installed games. Didn't remove any drives, so wasn't moving OS or anythng, so I was just shuffling installed games over to it. Most of which I did inside of Steam (right click on a game in your library, go into Properties, and in the Local Files tab, there's a "Move Install Folder" option. Other platforms weren't as slick (Epic, Xbox Games Pass) and required reinstallation.

Jonman wrote:

I dropped a new TB SSD into my machine last year, and exclusively use it for installed games. Didn't remove any drives, so wasn't moving OS or anythng, so I was just shuffling installed games over to it. Most of which I did inside of Steam (right click on a game in your library, go into Properties, and in the Local Files tab, there's a "Move Install Folder" option. Other platforms weren't as slick (Epic, Xbox Games Pass) and required reinstallation.

You can do it without a full re-download on Epic too if I recall:

  • Copy game's directory to temporary location.
  • Uninstall the game through Epic.
  • Begin to reinstall game in Epic, choosing new location.
  • Pause download in Epic. (Maybe cancel it? I can't remember 100%,)
  • Copy the files from your temporary location to the new location.
  • Resume download and it should finish near-instantly.

Yeah, if you have the ports to support another drive there really isn't anything wrong with keeping your OS on one SSD and installing stuff on the other. It's what I do in my own rig (128GB M.2 NVME running Windows 10, with a 1TB SSD for larger games with longer load times).

That's just generally good practice, it keeps things like file caching and system activity from interrupting game operations.

(Wrong forum!)

Robear wrote:

That's just generally good practice, it keeps things like file caching and system activity from interrupting game operations. :-)

On an SSD, I don't think that would matter. You could see slowdowns on spinning drives for sure, but SSDs can typically deliver data much faster than what programs can handle, so having several hitting the drive at once will often make no visible difference to any of them.

Yeah, probably right. Still simpler for updates, though.