Mike Hillyer of MySQL wrote about saving money on printers. Basically, if you are printing text most of the time (like most of us, especially the students, do), then getting a laser monochrome printer will be much cheaper in the long run.

We all know how inject printer companies make their profits – selling their colour inject printers below production cost, and then make profit by selling specialised ink cartridge. Otherwise why would printer companies spend lots of effort promoting “generic” cartridge? On the other hand, a laser print might cost more to start with, but it is usually built to last, have faster printing time, better text quality, and per-page cost would be lower in the long run. You can get an entry-level laser printer now for less than AUD$200

I bought my Brother HL-1250 more than 5 years ago for around $600, and it has gone through more than 15,000 pages. Still serving me faithfully. A 6,000 pages toner costs less than $100, and a drum rated at 20,000 pages would cost less than $200 – that’s a lot of printing for a personal printer! But still cheaper than buying cartridges that last less than 200 pages. Looking at the current Brother offering, you can get the entry level 2040 for $195, but it has smaller toner (2,500 pages), GDI and slow processor. Alternatively, Brother 5140, the next step up, costs $299. Besides faster processor, bigger toner (at the same cost), it can also talk PCL6 for all you Linux dudes who can’t do GDI.

UPDATE: If you are looking for Kmart’s (and Big W’s) Toy Sale from 6 July to 19 July, check this entry.

Tim wrote:

HUGE toy sale at Kmart (for two weeks from today) – including all sorts of soft toys, and a variety of PS2/xbox/PC games.

by the way, i just saw their catalogue, havn’t actually witnessed it personally yet …

Target is also having their big toy sale from 21st of July as well. Both Target and Kmart have the same parent company btw. Just in time for the new session – new toys for those still young at heart.

Saw this on the front page of Target Catalogue this week:

Mercury PC $699, includes keyboard, speakers and Lexmark Z513 printer.

• Celeron 2.xxGhz^*
• 256Mb RAM
• 40Gb Hard Disk
• 56k Modem
• 17″ CRT monitor
• Combo drive (burn CD watch DVD)
• Windows XP Home Edition
• 64Mb integrated graphics

* Can’t read the exact spec on the heavily distorted JPEG file.

Everything housed inside a dodgy-looking black case. Not bad a deal I think, if you can live with possibly sub-standard components. Lexmark Z513 costs around $50, and it prints colour. WinXP Home OEM would cost $100, and I am not sure what kind of computer you can build with $550.

Add another half gig of memory, and it would be a nice buy, if you need a new computer to get through student life. Deal closes 13th of July coming Wednesday.

Last night I was trying to transfer some money from my INGDirect on-line banking account, and noticed their 5.65% p.a. 90 days term deposit. That’s 0.25% above the regular INGDirect Savings Maximiser. Not bad.

Later on Vivian asked about it, and we went back to their website and cannot find the same deal from their product pages! Their term deposits have longer term (1+ years) with only 5.45%-5.55% p.a. interest rate. So I went back to the on-line banking interface, trying to remember where I saw the banner ads previously… And figured out that the 5.65% p.a. 90 days term deposit banner ad will only be displayed when you try to transfer money away from INGDirect! Not when you try to display transactions, not when you try to transfer money to them – only after you select the option that you want to withdraw.

What a tactic.

Nevertheless, we still applied the term deposit as 5.65% seems to be a good deal, and ING has easy to use interface, good customer service, etc. I know that there are a few other banks that gives better 90 days rate than INGDirect. Besides previous bad experience with BankWest, I guess I am just too lazy to move money around.

Get Mac (applecart.com.au) seems to be a cheap place to buy a Mac in Australia. On its front-page it guaranteed 6% off Apple’s recommended retail price, and up to 15% off selected software and iPod accessories.

For example,

There is indeed a lot of saving. The site is quite slow comparing with Apple online store though, and there’s not much information on cost of delivery, as Apple on-line store offers free delivery. I persume that they will be free as well for it to claim being competitive against Apple’s RRP.

WhatsInAName.com.au – Price Comparison of auDA Accredited Registrars. It lists all the .au registrars, their prices, and highlight the ones that are the cheapest. I used to use NameScout for my .au domains, but just realised that this Canadian company is no longer the cheapest to offer .au domains.

As of today (3 July 2005), the cheapest retail registrars are:

Got this from Tim:

GoDaddy has $US7 offer today (30 June 2005). It’s a special offer for existing customers, but the link works:

www.godaddy.com/gdshop/registrar/search.asp?isc=gdg0630b

It is actually USD$6.95 per year. Too bad I don’t have any project that needs a .com domain at the moment.

Edit on 6 August 2005: Just got another email from GoDaddy regarding this offer. Try “gdg0804b” as offer code instead for USD$6.95/year .COM domain registration. Offer expires 15 August 2005.