New updated website almost complete
Several months ago we commissioned Jared Ray of Jared Ray Design to create a new look and feel for our website. We’re 75% completed. All that is left is expanding the About Us section, adding a new section with bio’s on our employees, and re-working the MICR toner cartridge navigation so it takes less clicks to get to the MICR toner cartridge you are looking for.
We’re going for a clean look that is pleasing to the eye. We’re trying to avoid unnecessary graphics or anything that might distract our customers from finding what they’re looking for. We started with the flash animation on the home page, then created an entirely new look, updated logo, new icons, and added a feed that shows the most recent blog entries on our home page. In addition, Jared has also re-skinned our Word-press blog to match the website. We think it looks great, what do you think? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
New HP Printers P1102W and P1606dn – MICR in R&D
HP LaserJet P1102W
HP just released two new printers. Both printers are in the low end of the market with the 18ppm P1102W with a street price of $150 and the 26ppm P1606dn coming in at $230 or so. The printers are in my book throwaways but for the price they are offering some options that used to be pricey. The W in P1102W is for wireless. And the DN in P1606DN is for Duplexing and Network. for so much documentation that is printed, duplexing is a great way to save paper. Also HP has departed from the vanilla printer to a new sleeker looking black printer.
The P1606dn uses a HP CE278A toner cartridge, rated for 2,100 pages. the HP P1102W uses a CE285A rated for 1,600 pages. While upfront cost is low, the cost per page on these models is relatively high. These are designed for home or small business use. These make great little check printers if your volume is low, as they’re inexpensive and take up little space.
Both printers are now in R&D for MICR toner applications, and we hope to have both the P1102W / CE285A MICR toner cartridge and the P1606DN / CE278A MICR toner cartridge available sometime in May.
Happy Earth Day – Now is the time to Recycle
As you probably know by now, today is Earth Day…Hurray! Most people say yup, it is and head off to Target or Wal-Mart and consume. But it is a good reminder to think about recycling or better yet reducing your consumption. I’m hardly one to talk as I have two kids who are virtually destroying the world with all of their consumerism. I can’t go to the store without Max yelling “I want that”. I buy it for him. Consumerism 1, The Earth 0. (and let’s not address disposable diapers and landfills)
But seriously, consumerism has to be the biggest threat to the planet. In developing nations, everything is focused on survival and the necessities of living, so there’s little waste. But here in the land of plenty, we have whole stores of things nobody needs. I’m not saying don’t buy anything but clothes and food. But maybe put a little thought into what you buy. Buy from companies that are green like Patagonia and Advantage Laser Products. (Like how I just aligned us with Patagonia?) Buy recycled products (like our toner cartridges). When you have a choice, buy from companies that use less packaging. I find so many items that are over packaged. We recycle our household cardboard and it’s amazing how many boxes I have at the end of the week. Buy bulk food. I shop at EarthFare (like Whole Foods) and we buy cereal, flower, rice, etc. from the bulk containers. We save heaps of cash, and there’s minimal packaging. Not only less to recycle, but less produced in the first place.
That’s my earth day thought – curb your consumerism!
Solar Array Working Great!
February was our first full month of solar power. As you can see we produced about 1,600kwh which is right on track with predictions. In the summer we should produce twice that. Our typical sunny day is producing 100KWH, but as you can see there are days where the array produces almost nothing. Maybe drought is good?
We’ve already avoided putting 1,822kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s pretty cool.
New Advantage Cartridges: HP CE255A, CE255X, CE505A, CE505X
Good news! We finally have remanufactured (Advantage Brand) cartridges (text, not MICR) for the HP P3015 Series and the HP P2035/P2055 laser printers. These cartridges are in stock and will ship same day. As always our cartridges are guaranteed to work to your satisfaction. Althought we have new MICR versions of these cartridges, we don’t expect to have the remanufactured MICR versions for several months.
CE505A – for HP P2035 and HP P2055 – Advantage Brand – Remanufactured
http://www.advlaser.com/HP-P2035-P2055-Toner-CE255A-p/rcce505ap.htm
HP CE505X – for HP P2055 – Advantage Brand – Remanufactured
http://www.advlaser.com/HP-P2055-Toner-CE255X-p/rcce505xp.htm
HP CE255A – for HP P3015 Series – Advantage Brand – Remanufactured
http://www.advlaser.com/HP-P3015-P3015d-P3015dn-Toner-Cartridge-CE255A-p/rcce255ap.htm
HP CE255X – for HP P3015 Series – Advantage Brand – Remanufactured
http://www.advlaser.com/HP-P3015-P3015d-P3015dn-Toner-Cartridge-CE255X-p/rcce255xp.htm
New Product: HP LaserJet P2055d MICR Laser Printer for check printing
HP P2055d MICR Laser Printer
Hot off the press, we’re now shipping the HP P2055d MICR laser printers. This is a great little printer, prints 35ppm with stunning quality. The “D” means it duplexes as well. Not that you would duplex checks, still the duplexer comes in handy and is a great way to save paper. This is a real laser printer with it’s own processor and memory, not like it’s little brother the LaserJet P2035 which is host based. The host based machines are not necessarily bad, but they rely on the processor in your computer to handle the graphics work. Also this printer has PCL5e and PCL6 so it can take jobs from non-Windows machines and older DOS programs with no problems. The P2055d comes with a real CE255A, not a starter cartridge. We’ve replaced the toner with MICR toner. You still get the same NEW cartridge that came with the printer, but with MICR Toner.
Hello WordPress, Goodbye Blogger!
We’ve just switched our blog from blogger to wordpress. The plugins and CSS of wordpress convinced us that this was a good move, especially after blogger disabled ftp publishing. We did like the ftp publishing where we could host our blog on our domain advlaser.com.
And the survey says…
We recently polled our customers on a couple of questions and the results are below. Note only about 2.8% of all emails sent to customers resulted in a completed survey. I’m not surprised, we’re all bombarded with unnecessary email and completing a survey isn’t exactly a top priority. Still even if only a few people complete the survey, it’s helpful to keep a tab on the pulse of our customers. We had 37 Brother P-Touch printers to give away for people that filled out the survey, and 450 people filled out the survey. Sorry we didn’t have a printer for everyone, for those of you that didn’t get one – better luck next time! On to the survey…
UPS vs. FedEx – We’ve just switched to FedEx from UPS and while half of our customers seem indifferent between the two services, those that did have a preference prefered FedEx. I guess we made the right move.
Recycling with “the box” – this one surprised me. To date, we’ve had very little participation with recycling with the box. We’ve tried fliers with each “box”, but not much success. We recycle so many common items, but most people hopefully are recycling locally. Yet 61% plan to recycle with the box. Hopefully the survey also worked as a reminder that we offer this service and will recycle more and more with the box. Check out our box recycle flier and see all that can be recycled with “the box”.
Buying from environmentally conscious green companies – The survey we split 50/50 between those that prefer to buy green and those that buy based upon superior product and service. Luckily with Advantage, you don’t have to compromise. We are green and we provide the best products and service!
