Before you blame the Equipment Revisited!

It seems that my analysis of my printer problems may have been flawed!

A few days ago I had six documents and three labels to print: all needed to be produced in a rush. Now, call me a cynic, but I can always guarantee that when I'm in a hurry, the bugs and problems will manifest themselves. So, urgent job and I can't get the printer to print more than one document at a time (if I can get it to print anything at all). Thinking that I've already solved the problem I try the cable (no joy), so I replace the cable (still no joy), in despair I turn to Google.

It seems that there is a known bug in the Karmic kernel when using the hplib utility for USB printers (it works fine with network printers). The solution turns out to be fairly simple:

• Delete the USB printer from the HP Device Manager
• From the System Menu, select Administration & PrintingSelect Printer from the New drop down menu and the utility will search for available printers.
  
• When the printer dialog box appears, select your printer and then click on the Connection option (rhs)
  
  
• Select, USB
• Click the Forward button and follow the wizard

That's it!

The downside is that I can't use the hp Device Manager to monitor my ink levels or receive status messages: but at least I can print using my hp photosmart 7660 USB printer!

Window Dressing

Here's a tip that I discovered quite by accident:

I have a Logitech DiNovo cordless keyboard attached to my Ubuntu box and, as with most of today's commercially available keyboards, it comes with a Windows Start Key. If you press and hold the key and simultaneously press the tab key, you can scroll between open Windows in much the same way that you can in Microsoft Vista.



Just press the tab key (whilst holding the Start key) to move to the next window.