When you get a new appliance or piece of electronic equipment, do you sit down and read the owner's manual? Do you try out all the new features so that you are fully conversant with the equipment and ready for every eventuality?
I bet most of you are saying to yourselves "HELL, NO!"
I tend to do some reading when new equipment comes into the house, if only to solve some of the glitches that come my way. I am the first person who gets hit with problems because I am the one who is around the equipment all day long. Of course, I am also NOT the one who is mechanically minded. So a little preparation on my part is wise. At the very least, I have memorized the phone number where I can reach Dear Husband, and I have made note of all the serial numbers and support phone numbers for said equipment.
So....in the past four days, we have become the proud owners of a new HP "All In One," and a new Dell computer. I'm still trying to learn to use the quesedilla maker we received at Christmas.
*sigh*
Information overload! Scotty....my brain can't take it!
The fax machine in my office started acting strangely on Friday. I could receive faxes, but when I tried to send them it took forever! Our fax machine happens to be one of the Hewlett Packard Office Jets that has four functions. It can scan, copy, print or fax. I tried making a copy on it, and when the copy came out entirely black, and the machine was making a VERY strange noise....I knew it was time for a midnight burial.
Dear Husband is not one to let grass grow under his feet. I told him about the problem, and gave him a printout of a similar product, and he had me call our local computer store to see if they had any in stock. It's a good thing we went, because I got to browse. We ended up spending about $100 more, and came home with the machine that makes waffles and serves orange juice in the morning.
DH gets it set up. Sorta. We can send faxes, but not receive them. I go and hide, while he plays with the plugs some more. Okay, now we can send and receive them, but it takes forever for the fax to start up. More tinkering with ring tones. We should be good to go!
Monday morning DH calls me at 7:45 and tells me I have to fax something right away. In fifteen minutes I have to be out the door to take Mother to exercise, so I get started. I find the sheet in question, and type a coversheet for it. When I hit print....to my surprise, the coversheet is printed on the fax machine, not the laser printer. I think we need a little more tinkering. In this case, I'M the one who gets to tinker. I set the laser printer as the default in the control panel.
So....I typed in the number for my very first non-trial fax on this machine, and pressed the button to send a fax in black. There's no answer at the other end, and this HAS to be sent. I have a full morning of errands, and I won't be back until almost noon. Get out the instruction book.
It seems that the real world has been sending delayed faxes for quite some time now, and I'm happy to tell you that they have the method worked out! I was able to set the machine to re-send the fax while I was away. Okay.....one more thing to look up. Do the originals go in face up, or face down.....
I've tried the scan function. I have been longing for a scan so that I could post pictures of my quilts, and gardens and recipes and all those good things. If I can get this to work....this is the very first thing I scanned, part of a collection of polar bear cards that inhabit my office. With any luck RedEagle will shrink this down for me so that you don't have to scroll five blocks to the right to see all of the picture. (I still need lessons on editing images, sorry T!)
So...that's the story of the new fax, or at least the first installment. The story of the new computer is yet to come.