Mel in Hawaii

The form was designed to pull the information from the signature form, in this case supposedly the 1040, but you opened the form in a partnership return instead, thus getting the wrong information.

I bet it's the white paper sensor arm... Very common in this printer. Replaceable, but I would watch for a HP4, HP4Plus, HP5 (N or M models even better as they have the network card).

I don't know how many of you freqent places like Craigslist.org, but I do. It's amazing what people will throw out because it doesn't work just right. Do you throw out your 10 year old sports car with 2000 miles because it needs an oil change? I hope not. Yet lately I have been seeing lots of posts regarding 'Come get this printer before it goes in the landfill'. I picked up a HP Laserjet 5 with a 10/100 Jetdirect card that I bought for $5 because the pages were coming out 'dark grey'. This printer looked brand new, totally clean with only 2140 pages on the printer. The problem with it? It needed a new toner cartridge as the cartridge was 10 years old. Toner has a shelf life of 2-3 years max because of the rubber wiper blades that will get old and brittle. I even resurrected the toner cartridge by putting in a new wiper blade ($5). This printer went for about $1500 back in the day, maybe $1000 if they were lucky and got a REALLY GOOD Deal, throw in the network card that they added later and they paid about 50 cents for every page that came out of that printer, and now have gone out and bought a faster one. These machines will last forever (2,000,000 pages or more) as long as you keep them clean and the environment doesn't cause them to rust. With such a low page count, they certainly didn't need a new printer. Couple weeks ago I got a used 25 page per minute Toshiba photocopier with 2 spare toner bottles for FREE. The problem with this, it needed its ORRIGINAL drum replaced ($73) that is supposed to be replaced every 81,000 pages. This is a normal maintenance item that the company that sold it to them would have replaced as part of a maintenance contract. Orriginal list price on this machine was $13,000 and I got it for free (and they even helped me load it into my truck). Replaced one part and it's now working reliably in a small office earning me money. A mortgage company listed an HP3380 all in one Laser Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax machine for $20. True, it was giving an error saying that the toner cartridge was not installed. Seems they pulled the toner out before completely opening the door and caused a couple arms to come off their pivot points so the sensor didn't see the toner. It took me 20 minutes to pull the side panel off and put the parts back on. Yes, this machine is a cheaper one, but it's still a good machine. It's also currently working reliably in a small office earning me money. Before you throw that printer out, post a note here describing the difficulty and maybe we can get it fixed without having to give HP any more of our money, worse yet, fill up the landfill.

Glad you made it... I have been lurking too, mainly scanning for anything that I could help out with.

Unfortunately, I am one of the people who HATE it when the OS tries to do things for me. I am also one of those people who hate system policies that set things like folder views to that dang ICON view. Anything that prevents me from doing things 'my way' or 'assumes' that I meant to do something else is a bad feature. They eat up CPU cycles to do things that I never wanted them to do in the first place. I do like the spell check as I type feature, that's just an exception. But, for an inexperienced user, some of these features can be of great help. Unfortunately, every time I have come across it, it was because the user didn't understand what the computer was telling them and really messed up their systems by trying to follow the suggestions. Of course, that's my role, fix things that others have messed up, so if they did it correctly the first time, I never hear about it. Wayne, some people will absolutely LOVE that feature. The problem is, that the troubleshooting is being based on OLD outdated knowlege, written when very little problems were known. Things change in a heartbeat in the computer world and I don't see this feature being useful beyond simple things. Maybe they can keep the info fresh, maybe they will integrate all the knowlegebase info and just maybe it will keep it's usefulness over time. We will see. But for now, hopefully I still will have a job to keep researching the wierd new problems.

Personally I think the 'issues' with people getting NEW computers with Vista installed is actually with all the BUNDLED crap-ware that it seems every computer manufacturer insists on installing on the machine. How much of this crap-ware is actually 'designed' for Vista anyways? When the problems surface, they are hard to identify due to not knowing what is coming preinstalled with the computer, where the program works fine for one person and doesn't work for the next. Having worked in Technical support, I agree with the CYA comment, but it's also covering YOUR ass since if it doesn't work, it will be saving you headaches. Who here REALLY needs the features of Windows Vista anyways? Can you point out ONE strong argument for HAVING Vista beyond 'it's the lastest version'? Well, there's the support for XP argument, which is an artificial one as how many of you actually call Microsoft for technical support on the OS? That being said, I just put in an order for some Windows Vista Business desktops and they will come with all that crapware installed. First thing I will be doing is going back to a fresh install without it and setting up the applications that I want, in the order that I have tested to work. (No, I won't be testing ATX's software, unfortunately.)

Medlin!! Glad to see that you made it to the 'alternative' forum! I too was wondering about the NetFlix movies I was mailing and wondered if we were due for a rate increase. I just wish that along with the rate increase, they would up the size of the doors on our mailboxes at the post office as it's a bear to get those Netflix movies out of the box. Sometimes I just can't do it and have to go to the windows to get my mail. As for there being a machine at the post office to check your mail, I don't see one inside or outside, but then our post office is scheduled to be closed within a year and a half. When they do close the post office, I will drive to BB and get my movies as I will then have to drive to the post office that's right next to BB anyways. It's been nice while it lasted though.

Today I was wondering how many people in Hawaii have registered with the board. I realize that it's probably impossible, but is there a way to search on members from Hawaii or HI in the location field?

Buying the Forever stamps is a horrible investment in my oppinion. The potential for this to excede inflation? Probably not great. Great way for the post office to get everyone to 'invest' in them and give them your money now to hold. But after saying that, I actually have two books of them in my pocket at the moment with full intentions of placing them on my outgoing mail starting as soon as I run out of my old ones.

I am NOT a CPA, but I have a question here... Is TITLE to the car being transferred to the police department when this occurs or is this a 'rental' situation? Sounds more like they are renting the car to me. And I bet that the dealer is selling this car as NEW afterwards. And I wonder why I don't trust car salemen, especially their managers, and this is coming from someone who's fathers business was selling cars.

I didn't take 'offense' but I thought you were implying Glynn and William were the brothers who built the company. William has ALWAYS been there for the customers since he started in technical support (although he has worn many hats, just like most of the early people). I can remember this one incident of him carrying around a piece of paper with a customer who had a problem that no one could solve. He carried it around asking everyone for their take on the call until eventually we tried enough things that we finally found the answer (If I remember correctly it was a conflict with a 'windows based printer' corrupting the return data during printing so it showed correctly UNTIL we printed). He does his best to champion the customer's problems to the very end. I left ATX in 1999 when my pregnant wife decided that she couldn't handle the 40 degree below zero weather. She was from Honolulu, hence our move to warmer territory. If you owned the program before 1999, I talked to a majority of the users who called technical support. Not saying I took the majority of the calls, just that I got to talk to most of the people who WERE calling the support lines at one point or another. Many of the customers I could recognise by their voice on the phone. But, if you came on board after 1998, I probably wasn't talking on the phone much, just when things got really busy or when the problem couldn't be solved by the normal tech guys.

Hmm... When ATX was founded it was two brothers, Glynn in Maine and Steve in New York. Then Yvette in NY, Joanne and Myself in Maine... Dennis, William and so on. Hate to say I didn't know about Yvette for a long time since I only communicated with Steve on the phone, but the rest of the early crew I knew very well. I don't think ATX is anywhere near the same company it once was. I was so SAD when Glynn moved on as he had the integrity that I could only dream of. Glynn was a hard worker, believed in treating people fairly and with trust. I couldn't speak higher of any man than I can of Glynn. I had a visit from Steve not too long ago and I am really not sure if he was still with the company or not.

Beyond doubting that they would 'give up control' of the old forum data, I wonder if they are going to go after the name for legal reasons. Personally I feel that someone resurecting the board is a good thing, but the ATX today is not the ATX of yesteryear.

Personally I couldn't believe it was shut down so close to the end of tax season.