The Refurbished Laptops Guide » Peripherals

New website about slide scanners

Brent — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:22:25 +0000

Hi everyone,

If you’re in the market for a slide scanner (a peripheral used to convert 35mm film to computer images), I just launched a new website that should help you in that regard. Check it out here: Slide Scanner Guide.

Thanks!

Brent

Shopping:

Dell D600 Laptop 1.6ghz 40gb DVD/CDRW B Grade Includes Genuine XP Professional restore cd!

HP Pavilion DV6-2162NR 15.6-Inch Black Laptop--Up to 4.25 Hours of Battery Life

Compaq Presario CQ61-420US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

Compaq Presario CQ62-210US Laptop PC

Toshiba Satellite T115D-S1120 LED TruBrite 11.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

What Home Printer Brand Should You Buy?

GuestPoster — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:29:10 +0000

You might already be the owner of one or more printers for home use and you have probably either been satisfied with its performance or you haven’t. Either way you have now reached a point where you feel it is time to get a replacement of the old one or a new one that can complement the one that you already have (photo and color printers are the most common in this category).

But with a selection of thousands of different printers and at least a dozen of brands to choose from, where should you begin?

The most obvious places will be with a Canon, a Hewlett Packard or an Epson printer. These three companies are the main players on the home printing market and will present you with the largest amount of printers to choose from.

If we start with the Canon printers, you fill find (after a little research) that one of the most popular versions is the Canon Pixma printer. The reason that so many people like it is that it is easy to install, prints pretty fast and will deliver a reasonable quality of print at the price that you have to pay for it. And on top of that is has several other functionalities other than printing.

For the Hewlett Packard we see that one of the higher end home printers is the HP OfficeJet 6500 All-In-One model. As the name says this will not only be able to print but it will also scan documents and can be used as a copier. The price is slightly higher than the Canon model mentioned above but it is also a very different piece of equipment.

Finally we have the Epson printers. The thing with Epson is that they have never really been able to produce a model that had a larger (we’re talking millions) audience fall in love with them. One of the reasons might be that they have produces a lot less models to choose from, when compared to Canon and HP.

So my advice to you would be to start off by looking at either Canon or HP and to maybe even find a comparison site where you can see your chosen models against one another.

Shopping:

Canon PIXMA MP990 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer (3749B002)

Original HP 74 Black Ink Cartridge in Retail Packaging

Canon PIXMA MP560 Wireless Inkjet All-In-One Photo Printer (3747B002)

Canon PIXMA MX870 Wireless Office All-in-One Printer (4206B002)

Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces

If you want convenience, buy a portable harddrive

Brent — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:34:50 +0000

A good portable harddrive can make your business and personal life much easier. Without being tied down to a computer or even a laptop, you’re free to bring your data to wherever it’s needed. If you’re needed in a business meeting or other type of event and simply need to bring a powerpoint presentation or something else like that, you’ll have no problem doing it when you bring portable harddrives.

These drives come in a couple different formats: First, you have your typical USB flash drive. This is a portable drive, even if it isn’t the normal type of harddrive that you’re used to. These drives come in a large number of shapes and sizes, with some promotional USB drives looking like something out of Star Trek (drives that look like phasers and whatnot, not kidding!). Typically these portable USB drives come with anywhere between 1 GB and 128 GB, which is a far cry from when I was even in college 8 years ago. I remember freshman year being handed a flash drive with 64 MB of space. Hah! If only…

The second type of portable harddrive is the typical external USB hard drive that you might already be used to. These can be much larger than 128 GB, with some going up into the terabyte level (I’ve seen some that are 2 TB). The only issue with these is that sometimes they do take specific drivers to run, but don’t worry: If you’re using an up to date Windows machine with XP, Vista, or Windows 7, you’ll be just fine with this most likely. Just plug and play. However, they are bulky and a little tough to walk around with. If you have the option of using a flash drive I’d probably just do that. It’ll make your life much easier, trust me.

Oh, I forgot to talk about another type of portable harddrive: The internal drive put into an enclosure. These aren’t normally designed to be walked around with, but you can do this if you’d like. Most of them are designed to be used as external drives to supplement your own harddrive, but in a pinch you can certainly unplug it and take it somewhere. You may certainly need specific drivers for this type of application, and you’ll need to have gone out and buy a housing for the drive itself. It’s a little bit more work, but in the end it may be a little less expensive than buying a standard external.

So, I hope this has helped you some. Keep in mind that some of the best portable harddrives are the ones that cost the least!

Shopping:

Western Digital My Passport SE for Mac 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABW0010BSL-NESN (Silver)

Western Digital Elements SE 1 TB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBABV0010BBK-NESN (Black)

LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800 Portable External Hard Drive 301371

Seagate Expansion 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST906404EXA101-RK

Toshiba 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive HDDR500E04XK (Black)

How effective is a bluetooth adapter for your laptop?

Brent — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:05:55 +0000

What would you use a bluetooth adapter for if you were to buy one? Interfacing with your phone? Playing music with a bluetooth stereo? The options here are endless. You can in fact do all of this with ease when you go out and get a proper bluetooth adapter for a laptop. How do these work? These are typically USB “dongles” that plug into your USB port and allow an interface with your laptop. Most laptops do not come with a bluetooth interface from the store, so you’ll have to go out and get one of these. They’re not too expensive, and they open up a whole world of opportunity to accessorize your computing.

With the fact that most of these smart phones are now bluetooth equipped (and have been for some time), you can very easily connect your laptop to it to transfer files. If you have a specific ringtone you’d like to upload, you can do it pretty easily without plugging it straight into your computer. This is also great for doing things like synchronizing electronic calendars and contact lists. You can download your contact information via bluetooth straight from many cell phones, making it a good way to back up your data should your phone get lost, broken, or stolen. There’s nothing worse than having to reconstruct that data, trust me.

With a bluetooth USB adapter you can also use your laptop as a makeshift phone. Using VoIP (voice over IP), you can actually make phone calls with many computers. By interfacing with the adapter you can talk straight into your laptop and talk on the “phone” like you would normally. Using a standard bluetooth headset works great for this application. Better yet, this could save you a whole heck of a lot of money; who needs a phone bill when you can just do everything online?

One of the nicest things about using something like a Belkin bluetooth USB adapter is that you can interface your laptop’s music collection to various types of external sound systems. Many stereos these days are bluetooth equipped and are able to interface with your laptop’s bluetooth adapter, making it easy for you to listen to your music over the speakers as if you were actually listening to CDs. I know this isn’t exactly a new thing (heck, iPods have this functionality), but it’s something that you can do with one of these adapters. Check them out; their costs are small and their benefits plenty.

Shopping:

Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset [Retail Packaging]

Motorola H790 Bluetooth Headset (Silver)

Plantronics Discovery 655 DSP Ultimate Bluetooth Headset with DSP [Retail Packaging]

Plantronics BackBeat 906 Stereo Bluetooth headset

Sennheiser MM 200 Bluetooth Wireless Headset

If you want to fax with ease, try an external modem

Brent — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:21:51 +0000

How many times have you tried to fax something, but didn’t have access to a fax machine? Your answer may lie in purchasing an external modem. External modems have become extremely popular these days with the advent of faster and faster broadband; in fact, just about every cable modem produced is considered an “external” modem. Most computers don’t have internal broadband modems because of the fact that these modems are usually provided by the ISP; they’re proprietary and usually connect to that one ISP. Normal laptops have network interface cards (NICs), either wired or wireless, that interface with the external cable modem. It’s a system that’s worked quite well for years.

But, let’s say that you need to fax off your newest project straight from your computer at 2am. Kinko’s is closed, your office is closed, and so you don’t have access to an actual fax machine. Are you out of luck? No, absolutely not. You can still pick up an external dial up modem with fax capability to do this job. Yes, dial up is still alive and kicking! Luckily for you if you just want to send a fax, you don’t actually need to have a dial up internet connection; all you really need is a phone line.

So how does this all work? If you have a phone line at your house (some don’t with cell phones being so prevalent), you can simply connect your phone line straight into your fax modem and there you have it. At the software level you’ll find options that will allow you to fax your documents straight to a real fax machine. You don’t actually need a fax machine of your own; your laptop in this case actually becomes one. Pretty neat, huh? This could really save your bacon for that important presentation.

So how much is a USB external modem such as this? They are very cheap, so don’t worry. Depending on the robustness of the application (home vs. large business), you can find these for between $20-$80 USD. That’s really not much considering how much an actual fax machine can cost (a few hundred or more). You can find these just about anywhere, as well. Check out the usual stores such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart for these. If you need to find a specific type, check out Tiger Direct or any number of the online stores for exactly what you need. You can’t go wrong here to be honest.

Anyway, check it out. Don’t be bothered than a 56k external modem is 56k; you’ll get used to it again.

Shopping:

Diamond SM56USBSL 56K V92 External USB Modem

TRENDnet 56K USB Data/Fax/TAM Modem TFM-560U (Blue)

56K V.92 USB External Data / Fax / TAM Modem

U.S. Robotics 005686-03 56K V.90 External Fax Modem

Motorola DOCSIS External Cable Modem (SB4100)

USB to serial cable connections

Brent — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:44:36 +0000

Alright everyone, so today we’re talking about something a little bit opposite of what we’ve talked about before: USB to serial cable connections. Recently I wrote a post called USB RS232 conversions, wherein we discussed how to connect a USB device to an old laptop that might actually just have an old RS232 serial port. Today we’re going to go a little bit the other way and talk about how to use serial-based peripherals with your modern laptop that utilizes USB to the maximum extent possible. You probably have already noticed that your newer laptop probably doesn’t have an RS232 serial port; that’s because most new laptops don’t need them. Peripherals these days are almost never require a serial cable connection. It’s just unheard of unless you’re using something really old.

But hey, sometimes we might need to use a dot-matrix printer, right? For what, exactly? Heck if I know…that’s your own business. That being said, you can’t just expect to give up on using it if you really need it for a project. You need to find a way for it to interface with your computer. So, the USB to serial port cable adapter was born. This allows a laptop with a standard USB port to interface with that old peripheral where it wasn’t able to before. This is great news, right?

Well, that’s not the full story. While you can attach the new laptop and old printer just fine, there comes to problem of drivers. Drivers don’t always exist on modern operating systems for peripherals that are really old, so you may run into some problems there.

Windows XP and Vista are actually pretty good at recognizing strange and unusual hardware (the one thing Windows is good at?), so there is a chance that you can connect the two together and have them work just fine. If not, you may need to go to the peripheral manufacturer’s website (if they still exist) and see if they possibly support that peripheral still. With a little digging you may be able to make this happen. If neither of those work, you can search the search engines to see if someone has made any third-party drivers. Barring this, well, you may just be out of luck! USB to serial cables are great tools, but unless you have the drivers for what you’re working with, it just won’t work.

USB to serial converter cable adapters aren’t expensive, though. If it doesn’t work, heck, you’re out $20. It’s not a bad idea to try this method out before you go digging out your old 286.

Shopping:

CPA-1030 USB to RS232 Serial (DB9 and DB25, Male) Port Converter Cable New USB to RS232 DB9 Serial Cable + DB25 Pin Adapter / Port Adapter Converter for Magellan Garmin GPS, PDA, PC, Modem

USB to RS232 Serial 9 Pin DB9 Cable Adapter w/ Driver Disc for PC/MAC/PDA/Modem or Any Serial Port Devices

Sabrent SBT-USC6M Hi-Speed USB 2.0 to Serial (9-pin) DB-9 RS-232 Adapter Cable (BLUE)

Sabrent SBT-USC1M Hi-Speed USB 2.0 to Serial (9-pin) DB-9 RS-232 Adapter Cable (1-foot, Blue)

StarTech ICUSB232C2 2-Port USB to RS232 Serial DB9 Adapter Cable

Buying cool USB DVD drives

Brent — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:47:48 +0000

So, what’s up with these new USB DVD drives anyway? Why would you want one? How much would one cost for you to add to your ever-growing portfolio of accessories and peripherals? Those are all great questions! Let’s start at the very beginning: People buy USB DVD players because for some reason their laptops didn’t already come with them. This is common for laptops that were built before, oh, about 2003-2004, particularly in the models that were more “budget” oriented (read: Compaq Presario, et al). If you’d like to sit down and watch movies on your laptop, you really want to have one of these USB DVD drives handy with you. These are especially great if you’re on a long plane ride, riding in the car, or taking another long trip (don’t drive and watch, people ).

There are a few things you want to keep in mind though before you run off to the store. Not all of these DVD players are created equal, first of all. A good external USB DVD drive can range from very cheap (<$50) to expensive ($200+). Why is there such a large difference in price? It’s simple: The build quality is better with the more expensive brands, and the ability for it to handle bumps is improved as well. Have you ever tried to listen to one of those $10 CD players on sale at Wal-Mart? You know exactly what I mean: You breathe on it and it starts skipping all over the place. The same holds true for these DVD drives.

You want to make a good distinction between price and quality. If you go to the highest quality stuff first, you’re going to pay a lot of money out of pocket. That’s great for a quality item, but what if you could have gotten one for cheaper, but still works just fine? I recommend doing some comparison shopping before you get started; you need to start off with going to sites such as Amazon, epinions, etc. and reading over USB DVD drive reviews. Heck, even put that into Google and see what it’ll come up with. I guarantee that you’ll get your fair share of information that’ll help your buying decision.

Seriously, these are great peripherals that are going to make your life extra easy if you do a lot of traveling. I know I do a lot of traveling, and I wouldn’t be caught one of these external DVD drives. No way!

Shopping:

Samsung External Slim DVD-W USB Compatible with Mac and PC SE-S084C/RSRN (Red)

Slim Portable USB 2.0 External CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive

ASUS USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive SDRW-08D1S-U (White)

External USB 8X DVD +/-RW Dual Layer Burner for PC or Laptop

ASUS USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive SDRW-08D1S-U (Black)

Getting the most out of USB to RS232

Brent — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:02:03 +0000

Do you constantly finding yourself having trouble with USB to RS232 conversions on your old laptop? If so, you’re simply not alone. Many many people have older refurbished laptops that still support serial connections, but may not actually have a standard USB interface. If you’ve gone up to the attic recently and pulled down that old blocky laptop that weighs about as much as a cinder block, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So, let’s talk tonight about why you would definitely need to get a USB to RS232 adapter, what you’d use it for, and how much you’d expect to walk out the door paying. These are pretty crucial peripherals, so pay attention and stick with me.

As you might recall from our previous USB RS232 post, we talked about some of the down sides to using a simple serial connection versus USB. You might remember we discussed bus speed; that’s an important thing to note when you’re looking at using a USB to RS232 connector. You probably won’t be able to use the same peripherals as your newer laptops might be able to. For example, that new joystick that only comes in USB? That probably won’t work. The axes and motions are programmed to work properly with USB, not RS232. The same goes for these new All-In-One color laser printers. They require quite of data to be sent over a USB connection quickly, so if you try to convert USB to RS232 on your laptop, it’s probably not going to be too happy. That’s just one thing to keep in mind.

So, that being said, what can you use one of these USB to RS232 cable adapters for? RS232 adapters can be used for any number of applications, including older peripherals.

You heard right; if you have one of those old dot-matrix printers, your serial connection will be right at home. Just kidding (or am I?). If you want to talk about newer peripherals, many audio/visual systems utilize RS232, which would even allow you to go the opposite way. You could use this type of adapter to plug into these high-end AV units with a USB interface, even if you don’t actually have a serial port. Disclaimer: This isn’t very well founded; this is simply based on a conversation I had with a friend a while back!

That should about cover it for tonight. I hope that you’ve all learned a thing or three. As always, comment below if you’d like.

Shopping:

USB to Serial DB9 (RS232) Adapter Cable (Garmin compatible) with Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, MacOS X drivers.

TRENDnet USB to Serial Converter TU-S9 (Blue)

StarTech.com USB-to-RS232 Serial DB9 Adapter Cable (ICUSB232)

USB to RS232 DB9 Serial Cable + DB25 Pin Adapter / Port Adapter Converter for GPS, PDA, PC, Modem

Sabrent SBT-USC6M Hi-Speed USB 2.0 to Serial (9-pin) DB-9 RS-232 Adapter Cable (BLUE)

Finding cheap new PCMCIA USB cards

Brent — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:48:18 +0000

Are you looking for a cheap PCMCIA USB card to go with your new laptop? If you are, you’re in luck. These USB to PCMCIA cards are exactly what the doctor ordered when you happen to have a laptop that’s just a little bit older than most. While there aren’t too many laptops that are still running these days that don’t have normal USB ports, there are plenty around that are still lacking this feature. Usually you can tell if your laptop doesn’t actually have normal USB ports when you look on the side and don’t see the usual slot for something like a joystick, camera, newer printer, etc. As I said, most do have these, but if you’re looking for a PCMCIA USB card, you probably don’t!

Another great reason to get a USB PCMCIA adapter is to expand the USB capability of your current computer, even if you do have built-in USB slots. Usually this occurs if you’re running a lot of peripherals; if you currently have a printer, game joystick, camera, and external hard drive attached to your laptop, you probably need a little extra space. You can usually do this by buying a separate USB hub, but that’s not always required. PCMCIA is a great way to come to the rescue if you don’t want to clutter up your workspace further than you already have.

So, what is PCMCIA anyway? Quite simply, a PCMCIA card is a thin computer card that fits into a slot on the side of your computer. It’s roughly 4″ long and about 1/4″ thick, and goes straight into the side of your laptop. You’ll know if your laptop will support this type of card if you look on the side and see a thin slot about 3″ wide, generally with a push-button next to it to eject whatever card you already have in there. This is where your PCMCIA USB adapter will go: You just push it in until it stops (don’t ever force the card into the slot), and bingo, you have an extra USB plugin. It’s that easy.

Where can you purchase one of these? Anywhere laptops and laptop accessories are sold, really. You don’t have to go all out here; even Wal-Mart will sell these adapters. Amazon is also a great site to look for these cards, as well as places like New Egg. Prices vary, but you can generally find a USB to PCMCIA adapter for about $30. Nice and cheap, just how we like it!

Shopping:

Dynex DX-UC202 USB 2.0 PCMCIA Laptop Card

2PORT USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cardbus Pc Card Adapter

TRENDnet 2-Port USB 2.0 PC Card TU2-H2PC

USB to USB Mode 34mm ExpressCard Host Adapter for 3G AirCard ExpressCard AT&T Cingular Sprint Verizon Kyocera Marlin Novatel Sierra Wireless, NOT for PCMCIA PC card 54mm

Sabrent NT-USB20 USB 2.0 to RJ45 Fast Ethernet 10/100 Base-T Network Adapter

Check out custom USB peripherals for your laptop

Brent — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:54:51 +0000

Buying a custom USB peripheral isn’t as hard as you might think once you get down to it. The expense may certainly be worth it if you require some sort of custom functionality that you wouldn’t normally get from a standard USB device that you can normally buy from the store. Additionally, you might want to have a custom USB device so that you can offer it as a promotional item; this is oftentimes seen at workplaces where the company will have some sort of contest. If you win the contest, perhaps you’ll get a USB flash drive with your company’s logo on it. The sky’s the limit with this one. Whatever people’s imaginations come up with, really.

But of course we’re talking about your personal or business laptop right? What on earth could you use these for? Let me tell you: Security. Have you ever heard of USB keys? If you have, you know exactly what I’m talking about. These keys are ways to keep access control all while removing the need for passwords. Everyone simply has a custom USB key that they carry around with them, and if they need to work on a specific assignment, access a folder, or access an entire computer system, they just plug that key in and they get to work. No typing. The best part of this is the idea that you’re secure from external hacker attacks. There’s no worrying about your passwords being brute forced by those hackers when you use custom USB keys. Look into it.

Now, the next question out of everyone’s mouth (or keyboard, hah) is going to be “But, how much do these cost?” Well, that answer is, of course, that it varies.

If you decide to get a custom USB stick that’s made in the form of a pirate ship, yeah, it’s probably going to cost you a pretty penny. There are companies online that deal with this though, so you can visit those sites and get a quote if you’re really interested. If you just get a stick that’s got your company’s logo on it or something like that, you can expect to pay quite a bit less. It’ll still be a bit more than if you bought a generic one, but if you buy these in bulk you should actually come out ahead. This is appropriate for businesses who need lots of them.

Did this help you with the information you’re looking for about custom USB stuff? If so, leave a comment!

Shopping:

512MB DISKGO USB FLASH DRIVE 2.0 WITH CUSTOM LABEL

Kingston DataTraveler I - 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/32GB

SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ6-4096-E11

Credit Card USB 2GB

Mini Cooper USB Drive 2GB Black