PC users, on the other hand, seem to be proud of their computing annoyances. Online bragging matches are common, with each participant trying to top all the other PC disaster stories.

You think I’m kidding about Mac and PC users? Try this on for size: Mac people vs. PC people: Top 5 differences. (Thanks to TechBite subscriber Gil.)

This week’s story is a collection (okay, a hodgepodge) of ways my PC annoys me, with, of course, work-arounds.

Get the Volume Under Control

The Annoyance My wife’s office is close enough that our chatting tool is a shout down the hall. I can also hear when she plays a YouTube video–and frantically grabs the mouse and dives for the volume control icon in the Notifications tray.

The problem is that mi esposa keeps changing the volume from different locations. –Steve Bass

The Fix Here’s what usually happens: Judy opens a YouTube video, discovers the volume’s too loud (as do I), and she moves the YouTube slider to lower the volume.

The next day, she can’t hear a YouTube vid, but this time, she uses the Windows’ volume controller to increase the sound.

Everything’s cool, until a Windows’ system alert blasts her out of her chair or she plays an MP3 and Windows Media Player, with its slider set to high, and the music crinkles the wallpaper.

The goal is to get the volume consistent. Try this: Adjust every app that plays sounds–get it the way you like–and then leave it alone. Once you’re happy with the sound levels, adjust the sound from only one spot, the Windows volume controller.

I don’t have a fancy keyboard with volume and mute buttons, and I’ve never liked the volume controller in Windows–even in Win7, it takes two clicks to use.

Instead, I use Volumouse, a clever little freebie that controls my PC’s volume. I’ve configured Volumouse to mute the volume with one wheel turn on any menu bar, change the volume by turning the wheel anywhere on the Taskbar, and, in combination with a keyboard key, make a window transparent.

Volumouse controls your system's volume.

If you don’t like Volumouse, try 3RVX. It has fewer features, uses a wheel combo with the WIN key, and is easier to setup than Volumouse.

Hide and Seek the Status Bar in Firefox 4

The Annoyance I had five extensions I relied on that appeared in the status bar at the bottom of Firefox 3. I upgraded to 4.0 and the stat bar is gone. –Jim Murray, via e-mail

The Fix Yeah, I miss the status bar and the way it provided useful information. But that’s nothing new with upgrades: Developers take two steps forward with a few neat features–and then a step back by removing things we like.

We’re both in luck. The Status-4-Evar extension brings back the status bar, with the unobtrusive Progress Meter and Download Status, as well as letting me see my ever-faithful Lazarus, the tool that resuscitates Web forms I’ve  filled and lost.

Get Firefox's status bar back!

I Need a New Multi-Function Printer

The Annoyance Our old HP printer quit working and we want a used printer/scanner. We didn’t really like the HP; the ink is expensive and it was very touchy.  We just want to occasionally print coupons and documents and need to scan some photos and documents to the computer.–pdxcatlovers, via Broad_band.

The Fix I’ve used and reviewed over a million multi-function printers and I say: get a Lexmark. I’ve had the Prestige Pro 805 for about 14 months and I ride it hard. It’s behaved perfectly for all that time.

Last week, much to my dismay, the print head stopped working. But with a five year warranty on the printer, here was the test.

I called tech support–outsourced, but smart and accommodating. His first comment: If I can’t help you fix the problem, don’t worry–we’ll ship you a new print head.

We went through a couple of things –firmware upgrade and cleaning the print head. No luck.

In two days I had a new print head–as well as a set of cartridges for the inconvenience. It was an easy, 10 second job: The print head lifts out just like one of the print cartridges. First take out the print cartridges and then lift a lever.

And to answer next your question: He didn’t know I was the exalted CEO of TechBite and czar at Bass International.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered right to your inbox, and it's free.]

All of a sudden, ink jet printer companies are trying out some radically new designs–ones that stray far afield from printer form factors that have changed very little over the past fifteen years or so. Last month, HP announced the Envy 100, a low-profile all-in-one that looks rather like a 1980s-era VCR. And now Lexmark is unveiling the Genesis, an unusually high-profile all-in-one. The tall-boy design has a purpose: It permits for a thirty-percent smaller footprint. And Lexmark accomplished it by incorporating a scanner that’s unlike any I’ve seen before.

First of all, the scanner bed is vertical rather than horizontal: You pull down the front of the Genesis, revealing a platen inside that you lean your document against. And there’s no scanning bar that runs its way across the document to capture it–instead, Lexmark is using digital-camera technology. There’s a lens at the back of the Genesis that snaps a picture of your image. Since no moving parts are involved, scans are fast: Lexmark says that preview mode is “instant” and that the Genesis can do a full scan in as little as three seconds.

The vertical design means you can’t slap down multiple small documents (such as receipts) any which way, but a clip at the top lets you fasten items such as photos into place at the top of scanning bed, then position others at its bottom. A Lexmark representative told me that the Genesis is actually better for scanning bound volumes than traditional scanners, because it’s less likely to render scans illegible by producing a pitch-black shadow effect around the binding. I’d be curious to see how it fared with a variety of typical items. (Unlike some less creative designs, it doesn’t do sheet-fed scanning of multiple-page documents.)

The Genesis has a 4.3″ MyTouch color touch-screen–similar to the ones on recent HP printers–and Lexmark’s SmartSolutions, a Web-connected system for automating common printing tasks and providing document-related apps. (For instance, you can scan an image directly from the Genesis into your Evernote account.) The printer will sell for $399 and Lexmark plans to start shipping it early next year.

Today, however, HP is announcing a bunch of new printers and all-in-ones–and three of them are strikingly new, in three strikingly different ways. I was recently briefed by the company and saw the new models in person.

The most newsworthy newcomer is the $399 Photosmart eStation, the new top-of-the-line all-in-one in HP’s Photosmart line. For the most part, it’s recognizable as a Photosmart, but it sports the biggest, fanciest control panel you’ve ever seen on a personal printer–a 7-inch touchscreen that provides access to the Web-connected printing apps that HP has been rolling out since last year.

The roomy screen doubles as a digital photoframe. But as rumored, the the most interesting thing about it is that it ain’t just a printer control panel: You can pull it off the printer and use it as a tablet. Here’s a crude little video I shot of that happening:

(If you grab the tablet and lounge with it on the sofa, the eStation is still usable by other members of the family–it’s got basic built-in buttons for all functions except faxing.)

The eStation’s tablet runs Android; that, coupled with the 7-inch display, makes it feel a bit like a distant cousin of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. HP, wisely, isn’t pitching it  as an iPad killer, or even a direct iPad rival. Instead, it says that the tablet is mostly meant for use around the house, and mostly about the printing-related apps it packs. It also does Web browsing, e-mail, and music and video features, and it packs an e-reader app that’s powered by Barnes & Noble’s electronic bookstore. But it doesn’t have access to third-party apps from the Android Market, and its battery life–four to six hours on a charge–is relatively brief.

HP presumably started designing the Android-powered eStation before it agreed to acquire Palm in April, thereby getting itself an in-house mobile operating system, WebOS. The company has already said it intends to put WebOS on printers. When I asked HP executives whether the eStation hints at what a WebOS printer might look like, they understandably tap-danced around the question rather than addressing it directly. But they did acknowledge that it demonstrates some of the interesting things that become possible when you put a full-blown OS on a printer.

Interesting new HP printer #2 is the Envy 100–which borrows its moniker from HP’s Envy line of laptops. It’s an all-in-one that prints and scans, but if it weren’t for the color touchscreen you might mistake it for a largish 1980s-era VCR.

Where does the paper come out? Well, it’s easier to show that than to explain it.

HP executives told me that the idea behind the Envy’s consumer-electronics-like aesthetics and low-profile case is to create a printer that looks good and works good almost everywhere in the home, since many people are no longer setting up a specific area as a home office. I’d never heard that trend articulated by anyone, but it makes sense to me: When I’m at home, I work anywhere and everywhere around the house, and about the last vestige of a dedicated “home office” is my HP Officjet Pro printer.

Interesting HP printer #3 isn’t anything as radical as the eStation or the Envy, but it’s still pretty clever. It’s the LaserJet Pro CP1025NW, a $229 color laser which HP says is the world’s smallest. At 15.7″ by 15.7″ by 8.8″, it is, indeed, remarkably petite for a color laser–if you’ve got room for a printer at all, you’ve got enough space for this one.

On the outside, the CP1025NW looks like a garden-variety color laser, only smaller. It’s the insides that are inventive: HP downsized the printer by putting its toner cartridges on a carousel. You only get access to one at a time, and cycle through them until the one you want to replace glides into view.

These three models are only part of a major rollout of HP inkjets and lasers for home and business use. The other big news is that all the new models will support ePrint, the new HP technology that permits driverless printing from phones, tablets, and any other device that can send e-mail attachments. (ePrint-enabled models are the first printers that will work with Apple’s new AirPrint printing from iPads and iPhones; some of the new HP models will ship without the technology, and get it via a software update later this year.)

Some of the new HPs also support the company’s Web-enabled printing applications, which let the printer grab content from the Web directly, without a PC being involved in the process. Until now, all the apps have had consumers in mind–for instance, it’s introducing one that prints out educational materials featuring Sesame Street characters. But now that HP is adding color touchscreens and app capability to its business printers, it’s also introducing productivity-oriented apps. One new one gives you access to QuickBooks records; another lets you print Google Docs documents directly from the printer.

This Monday-morning eye-opener is being announced by HP printing honcho V.J. Joshi at an event in New York. It’s a new feature called ePrint that HP is building into a trio of all-in-one printers. The goal is audacious: enable printing from gadgets that have no built-in support for printing, without requiring so much as installing an app. It’s a logical one for HP to pursue, given that devices that can’t print can’t help consumers use up ink. And the way HP did it is surprisingly simple: It built drivers into the printers themselves, and gave them Wi-Fi networking and e-mail addresses.

To print a document–like a photo, a PDF, or a Microsoft Office-format file–you e-mail it to the unique e-mail address associated with an ePrint-capable printer. It receives the message, detaches the file, and prints it. You can also e-mail attachments to the printers from a PC or Mac, bypassing the computer’s driver; people who bring these printers into their homes or workplaces will presumably want to print the old-fashioned way, but ePrinting might be handy in transient-printing scenarios such as at hotel business centers.

Are there security issues here? Well, you won’t want to print anything you’re not comfortable sending as an unencrypted file attachment. There may also be some risk of spammers trying to target printers’ e-mail addresses with junk documents. But HP assigns printers randomly-generated e-mail addresses which it says will be hard for spammers to determine, and lets you set a printer up so that it’ll only accept e-mail from whitelisted addresses which you specify.

ePrint doesn’t make lack of printer support in devices such as the iPad a non-issue. For one thing, it’s available on a grand total of four printers from one company. There’s no way to specify options, so it’s plain-vanilla, quick-and-dirty printing. And if there’s no way to get something into a file attachment, there’s still no way to print. Want to print a Web page from an iPhone or an iPad? The best you can do is to create a screen grab, then print that. But what HP has come up with is still ingenious and useful.

The new printers, which HP calls “e-All-in-Ones,” include the $99 Photosmart, the $149 Photosmart Plus, the $199 Photosmart Premium, and the $299 Photosmart Premium with Fax. All four build on features introduced last year in the original Photosmart Premium With TouchSmart Web, an all-in-one printer with an iPhone-like touchscreen interface and the ability to run apps that print out content such as maps, crossword puzzles, coupons, and coloring pages directly from the Web. All the new models can access the existing apps and new ones which HP is introducing with partners such as Crayola, but only the $199 Premium has the sexy 4.3″ touchscreen. The other versions all have smaller screens with more prosaic user interfaces; I get the sense that HP thinks that people are interested in printer apps, but aren’t willing to pay a premium for an extravagant interface.

In a real sense, the new Photosmarts (some of which won’t all be available until September) are autonomous networked computers that happen to be dedicated to the task of printing. And the HP executives who briefed me on today’s news were up-front that these first models just scratch the surface of the idea. HP is already saying its buyout of Palm will let it build printers that run Palm’s powerful Web OS, and the execs I talked to spoke of possibilities such as customized newspapers that automatically print from the Web every morning, so they’re ready to grab from the paper tray when you wake up.

There’s huge potential in the concept of Web-based services talking directly to a printer without a PC serving as middleman, especially since browsers are notoriously lousy at printing. If HP builds on this idea, it’ll enable scenarios such as Web-based office suites being able to send richly-formatted documents directly to the printer, or Webmail clients that can automatically print certain messages based on rules you specify. Pretty cool, potentially–especially if ePrint-like features end up being standard equipment in all sorts of printers from all sorts of companies.

Lexmark makes its money the old-fashioned way. It sells printers at higher-than-competitor’s printers, but then sells the ink cartridges at reasonable prices.

I tried the Lexmark Prestige Pro805 multifunction printer for over a month (I won’t review something unless I have decent hands-on time, despite howling from the PR people).

Amazon discounts the Lexmark Prestige Pro805 for $200, which is about what others discount it for. The Pro85 uses four single-ink cartridges. When purchasing directly from Lexmark, you’ll pay $5 for black and $10 for color. Shipping is free and Lexmark’s recycling program gives you two free cartridges for every five you buy and return empty in a year.

Lexmark claims you can get 510 standard pages from one black cartridge. What’s standard? you might ask (nope, I don’t know). Is anyone willing to put this to the test (besides HP, Epson, and Brother, who as far as I know, haven’t)? Okay, so we’re going to have to take Lexmark’s word for it.

If you register the printer, the warranty period is extended to five years. I have no clue how to judge the value, except to say only a few of the inkjet printers I’ve used have lasted that long — so I guess that’s saying something. You also get toll-free access to tech support for the life of the printer.

Lexmark's all-in-one is economical and smart.

Lexmark’s Specs

The Pro805 is a color inkjet printer with a flatbed scanner, a copier function, and an automatic document feeder that holds up to 50 sheets of paper. (That came in handy for when I had to copy scads of docs for my parents.) If you need fax capabilities, try the cheaper Prevail Pro705 (it doesn’t have an LCD display).

The paper tray holds 150 sheets. The printing speed is 10 pages per minute for black and 6 ppm for color; the Pro85 does two-sided printing and prints at 2400- by 1200 dots per inch in black and 4800-by-1200 dpi in color.

The Pro850 has both USB and memory card ports — you can print directly from either. The other way around works, too: Scan and save as a photo, document, or PDF directly to a flash drive or to your PC.

There are three ways to connect the printer to your PC: wireless, USB, or networked through an Ethernet connection.

Hands on the Lexmark

I gauge the value of a product using two criteria: Would I shell out the bucks for one? What would I say if you wrote and asked for a recommendation?

No matter how cheap the ink cartridges are, the 850Pro needed to be easy to install and use, and it had to perform well. The Lexmark Pro850 got high marks in all areas and had only a few annoyances.

Likes and Dislikes

I was enamored with the interactive installation tutorial. Briefly, I watched on-screen animations that told me what to do, step-by-step. Even as an experienced user, I didn’t feel like I was being talked down to; it just made the process go smoothly.

The LCD touch screen is logically designed for navigating through the scan, copy, and other functions. It’s also useful for previewing a document (you see exactly what will print) to make sure it looks okay before actually printing.

I also like Lexmark’s SmartSolutions site, which lets me add tools to the printer. For instance, I wanted to scan directly into EverNote, a free organizer. Or instead of navigating to a certain function, I wanted (and got) a shortcut that gives me icons for specific functions–to, say, make a black-and-white copy, or on legal-size paper.

I’m getting weary of seeing my energy bill go up while watching an endless stream of LCDs needlessly lighting up my office. So I like the Pro850′s economy mode that dims the LCD screen and sets the printer to a power saving level after 10 minutes. Even though I recycle paper that’s been printed on one side, I really like the two-sided printing feature to save paper.

Nothing’s perfect, but the Lexmark’s annoyances are small.

1. I’d hoped the installation routine would immediately recognize my wireless connection. It took too much fooling around, so I used the USB cable to complete the install. Once done, the printer spotted and used the wireless signal.
2. My overhead lighting makes the stationary LCD difficult to see, so I’d like to be able to adjust the height of the screen (instead of tilting my head).
3. The paper exit tray, a small lip that catches and holds paper as it exits the printer, is too small (see arrow in screen capture below). You get paper jams if you print more than roughly 10 pages.

The LCD panel is great; the paper exit tray, not so much.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

I spent three days at the not-as-big-as-before Consumer Electronics Show. I ignored the behemoth booths — Microsoft, Panasonic, Casio — and focused on the smaller, more interesting companies along the edge of the exhibit floor. I spotted some innovative products:

• A smartphone app that turns off e-mail and texting features if the speed of your vehicle exceeds five miles per hour.
• Lexmark’s multifunction printer that has something very appealing: Lexmark ink cartridges for under $5.
• Fashionable 3D eyeglasses for when you can afford a 3D plasma screen.
• Something to bring your electronic gadget back to life if you drop it in water.
• A video camera the size of a flash drive with two hours of recording time.

I have lots more, including a report on Terk’s Hi-Def internal and external antennas and a new-style rechargeable battery. Below is my first blurb about a portable radar device; more next week.

Pull Over, Mr. Bass

From CES: Need to give that speed-trap motorcycle cop some help? Whip out PocketRadar, a cell-phone sized radar gun, and get the real-time speed of any moving object. I’ve never had the need, but you might want to clock the speed of your child’s pitch, see how fast that crow is flying, or aim it at your kid pulling out of the driveway. It’s interesting, but at $250, too expensive for me.

Epson Workforce All-in-One 610

You know how unhappy I am with multifunction printers. The last one I bought–from Brother–didn’t last more than a year; the printer claimed the cartridges needed replacing even when there was still plenty of ink in them.

Epson sent me its Workforce 660 to try. I’ve had it a month (I ship it back to them in February) and I like the way it works. First, the stats: $200 list, but about $120 at Costco and $170 at Amazon.

Likes: It can scan, fax, and copy, and it prints faster than my laser printer. There are ports for memory cards and flash drives; the printer has Wi-Fi connectivity, so setup with my wireless router was easy. The automatic document feeder is handy for multipage scans or faxes.

Dislikes: No automatic duplexing. Also, the printer looked slick, but some parts–the input and output trays, for example–felt flimsy and cheap. The 100-sheet input tray shudders loudly when the first sheet of paper is pulled through the printer. It scares the dog each time. Plain paper black printouts were sharp; color, not so much. Photo printing on photo paper looked fine. The control panel has lots of info, but navigation is a little confusing. The killer, as you’d expect, was the cost of ink cartridges: Epson black at about $16 each; color roughly $12. LD Products sells reconditioned Workforce cartridges for $7 each.

For $120, and using remanufactured cartridges, the Workforce 610 is an okay deal. But before you buy, watch for my Lexmark review in two weeks.

JDownloader: Open Source, Free, and Terrific

For years I used FlashGet to download freebie tools and legitimate movies and TV shows. FlashGet works fine, but it just hasn’t kept up with a few innovative–and downright lovely–features in my new favorite, JDownloader.

It’s free (and Open Source) and it remembers download passwords, checks for valid links before downloading, and automatically unarchives the file with a built-in WinRAR plug-in. It also does those simple things you ordinarily have to do, like removing the dots and underscores between words in file names. And built in is an online, real-time chat window to help you get support from other users.

I use JDownloader in Firefox; read the Install and use JDownloader with Firefox blurb to help you with the installation. Chances are good you won’t have any problem with JDownloader, but I’ve put together a few JDownloader Tech Tips just in case you do.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

The Lexmark (top) and HP (bottom) touchscreens are the same size (4.3″) and look strikingly similar–actually, both look rather like iPhones affixed to the front of a black-and-silver printer:

However, Lexmark is using its touch technology–which it’s calling myTouch with SmartSolutions (not to be confused with T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G phone)–for quite different purposes than HP’s. The Lexmark printers, unlike HP’s consumery model, are designed for use in small- and medium-sized businesses. Lexmark’s screens are Web-enabled (they let you scan documents and e-mail them without a PC being involved, and include a simple RSS reader) but don’t let you print Web content directly in the way that HP’s does. Instead, Lexmark mostly uses the screen to simplify tasks that you’d normally accomplish with the dedicated plastic keys that most printers have. And the SmartSolutions part of myTouch with SmartSolutions is a nifty-looking feature that lets you save multiple custom sets of settings for use by different people–potentially pretty handy in offices where folks share a printer.

Lexmark’s starting price point is also half of HP’s $399: The company will release touchscreen printers for $199, $299, and $399, with varying sets of features. They’re not due to ship until September 1st (HP’s printer is also supposed to show up this Fall). I hope to get my hands on one for a review.