We have often discussed in this space the importance of disposing of obsolete or unwanted electronic appliances in a responsible manner. Since many of these devices are made up of components containing some very bad things for the environment and our collective health, pitching out that old Sony with yesterday’s dinner scraps for the Rumpke guy to haul away is not a very good idea.
For those of us who live in Hamilton County, there is now an new option. The Hamilton County Solid Waste Management District opened the 2009 Computer and TV Recycling Drop-Off service on May 1st. The program will run Monday through Friday from 9am to 4pm through the end of the year. Hamilton Country residents who are unable to come during the week will be able to drop off computers and TVs on a few select Saturdays this year (June 13, August 8, and October 10 from 9am to 2pm).
The drop-off site this year is 11093 Kenwood Road, Building #7, Blue Ash, Ohio 45242.
Residents can drop off all computer equipment for no charge. Residents dropping off TVs, however, will be charged $10 for TVs weighing under 60 lbs and $20 for over 60 lbs. If you have a Sony, Zenith, LG, or Goldstar TV, these will be accepted for no charge through the Sony’s funded “take back” program.
Now, this particular program is open only to Hamilton County residents. You need to bring proof of residency such as a driver’s license or utility bill. More information about the program is available at their website at http://www.hcdoes.org/SWMD/Residents/CompElec.html.
There are other options available in the area. Best Buy has a program that will allow you to recycle certain appliances for a nominal charge. They have some restrictions on the screen size and number of items that will be accepted. Before lugging that TV or computer to the store you may wish to call or go to the Best Buy website, http://www.bestbuy.com/. Search for “recycling.”
For sure, getting rid of these items is becoming a bit of a hassle. The importance of doing it right and safely more than outweighs any inconvenience or modest cost.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Kindle Could Be The Newspaper's Best Friend
While it seems that many niche print publications and community newspapers like The Harrison Press are doing OK in this digital hurricane, it is no secret that many daily newspapers, even some of the icons like the Boston Globe or Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, are not successfully navigating these troubled waters. The shrinking size of our local Enquirer is testament to this trend. There is certainly no lack of interest in the news. The issue is how we get our news.
Fewer and fewer of us wake up in the morning and trudge to the driveway to find out what happened in the world while we were asleep. Instead we switch on the TV to view newscasts which span the 24 hour clock, or, as more often the case, we go online. The irony is that we go online to read many of the very newspapers that are having trouble surviving.
Very few print publications adopted a “pay for service” model in the early days of the web. Now they are finding that once you give something away free it is very hard to begin to charge for it. With fewer and fewer people paying for the paper and ink copy and more and more reading the material free online, it does not take an economist to figure out that this model is no longer sustainable.
The recent announcement of a new model of the “Kindle” may have given some hope to this struggling industry. The “Kindle” is an electronic reader that has been around a few years. Unlike a PDA or Laptop, the “Kindle” is designed for one purpose. That purpose is to display, in an easy to use and easy to see device, printed words as close to the experience of reading a book or newspaper as possible. The new “Kindle” has a larger screen than the first model and uses a special display that is easily read in bright sunlight.
Of course the big advantage is that it can retrieve and store more newspapers, magazines and books than a small bookstore. And since it is electronically tethered to the online world, these materials can be updated quickly and inexpensively. Rather than waiting for the next edition of the newspaper for updates, in reality you could be reading the beginning of a story before the end was finished. Once a book is released, there is no waiting for it to be shipped from Amazon or to wind up in the library
Even the textbook companies are getting into the game. Some prestigious institutions like Case Western University in Cleveland are going to try “selling” texts to students in this electronic form.
There are other companies like Sony that have developed similar readers. More and more publications are experimenting with subscription plans. How people will adapt to reading on a “electronic” screen rather than on a piece of paper is still unknown. For sure if the “Kindle” and other readers are successful, we will accomplish at least two good things: we will keep the diversity of news reporting healthy and we will save more than a few trees.
Fewer and fewer of us wake up in the morning and trudge to the driveway to find out what happened in the world while we were asleep. Instead we switch on the TV to view newscasts which span the 24 hour clock, or, as more often the case, we go online. The irony is that we go online to read many of the very newspapers that are having trouble surviving.
Very few print publications adopted a “pay for service” model in the early days of the web. Now they are finding that once you give something away free it is very hard to begin to charge for it. With fewer and fewer people paying for the paper and ink copy and more and more reading the material free online, it does not take an economist to figure out that this model is no longer sustainable.
The recent announcement of a new model of the “Kindle” may have given some hope to this struggling industry. The “Kindle” is an electronic reader that has been around a few years. Unlike a PDA or Laptop, the “Kindle” is designed for one purpose. That purpose is to display, in an easy to use and easy to see device, printed words as close to the experience of reading a book or newspaper as possible. The new “Kindle” has a larger screen than the first model and uses a special display that is easily read in bright sunlight.
Of course the big advantage is that it can retrieve and store more newspapers, magazines and books than a small bookstore. And since it is electronically tethered to the online world, these materials can be updated quickly and inexpensively. Rather than waiting for the next edition of the newspaper for updates, in reality you could be reading the beginning of a story before the end was finished. Once a book is released, there is no waiting for it to be shipped from Amazon or to wind up in the library
Even the textbook companies are getting into the game. Some prestigious institutions like Case Western University in Cleveland are going to try “selling” texts to students in this electronic form.
There are other companies like Sony that have developed similar readers. More and more publications are experimenting with subscription plans. How people will adapt to reading on a “electronic” screen rather than on a piece of paper is still unknown. For sure if the “Kindle” and other readers are successful, we will accomplish at least two good things: we will keep the diversity of news reporting healthy and we will save more than a few trees.
Monday, May 11, 2009
When All Else Fails, READ the Directions
I have written often about the increased complexity of new consumer electronic devices. From cell phones to televisions, manufactures continue to incorporate more and more features into the devices. As a result they can be vexing for those of us without advanced degrees in electrical engineering. While some are better than others, the printed manuals are often not clear. Don’t get me started on the customer support hot lines.
Over the past few weeks my colleagues at CET and I have been taking more and more calls and emails asking for help with digital television questions. It is surprising to me how many individuals seem to have the same issues. I thought I would share some of them with you since it may help you or someone you know.
For fifty years or more, we American consumers were accustomed to selecting a TV. We brought it home and plugged it in and sat down and enjoyed our program. In the early days we may have had to adjust a few dials to keep the picture from rolling or move the rabbit ears a few inches to the right to clear up the picture. All in all it was painless.
Today’s digital TVs, while they may look on the outside like their ancient cousins, are not as easy to set up. I have talked to more than 20 people over the last month about problems they were having with their new digital TV set only to discover that they had never set it up correctly when they took it out of the box.
Most new sets can’t just be plugged in and turned on. There is an initial set up that allows the set to scan for available channels, set up proper screen size and shape, display captioning and program information, and even the amount of time it will stay turned on before it decides to turn itself off.
All of these features, if not set up correctly at first, will cause frustration. For example many I have talked to paid a high price for a large plasma high definition TV but, since they did not set it up correctly, have never actually been watching digital high definition programming. When we “talk” them through the set up and the picture switches to HD, they react like little kids at Christmas.
Then there are the people who call to ask why the TV works only for three hours and then goes dark? There is nothing wrong with the TV. The energy saving function is set for a certain time after which, if a channel has not been changed or some other action performed, it turns off. This is an “Energy Star” feature. Again, you need to set up the time the set stays on when you first set up the TV.
My advice, as bad as the manuals may be and as eager as you might be to enjoy your new TV, take the time to sit down and read through the manual … or get that electrical engineering degree.
Over the past few weeks my colleagues at CET and I have been taking more and more calls and emails asking for help with digital television questions. It is surprising to me how many individuals seem to have the same issues. I thought I would share some of them with you since it may help you or someone you know.
For fifty years or more, we American consumers were accustomed to selecting a TV. We brought it home and plugged it in and sat down and enjoyed our program. In the early days we may have had to adjust a few dials to keep the picture from rolling or move the rabbit ears a few inches to the right to clear up the picture. All in all it was painless.
Today’s digital TVs, while they may look on the outside like their ancient cousins, are not as easy to set up. I have talked to more than 20 people over the last month about problems they were having with their new digital TV set only to discover that they had never set it up correctly when they took it out of the box.
Most new sets can’t just be plugged in and turned on. There is an initial set up that allows the set to scan for available channels, set up proper screen size and shape, display captioning and program information, and even the amount of time it will stay turned on before it decides to turn itself off.
All of these features, if not set up correctly at first, will cause frustration. For example many I have talked to paid a high price for a large plasma high definition TV but, since they did not set it up correctly, have never actually been watching digital high definition programming. When we “talk” them through the set up and the picture switches to HD, they react like little kids at Christmas.
Then there are the people who call to ask why the TV works only for three hours and then goes dark? There is nothing wrong with the TV. The energy saving function is set for a certain time after which, if a channel has not been changed or some other action performed, it turns off. This is an “Energy Star” feature. Again, you need to set up the time the set stays on when you first set up the TV.
My advice, as bad as the manuals may be and as eager as you might be to enjoy your new TV, take the time to sit down and read through the manual … or get that electrical engineering degree.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Some TV Options When The Lights Go Out.
I continue to get asked about the availability of battery powered digital TV sets. With the storm season on us and the inevitable Duke power outages almost a sure thing, many rely on small battery powered TV sets to get news and weather reports. With the analog broadcasting cut off just around the corner for the local commercial station on June 12, and the public TV stations already broadcasting only in digital, your trusty old analog portable will soon be useless.
When I last wrote about this a year or so ago, there were only two portable DTV sets available and they were very expensive. Things are beginning to change. While I will discuss some options, I still feel that unless you absolutely can’t live without TV during a power outage you may wish to wait a bit longer for sets with more features and lower prices to emerge.
You have two options for receiving local over-the-air DTV broadcasts. You can purchase a tuner that plugs into a lap top computer and uses the computer screen to display the program or you can select from a number of small battery powered TV sets with digital tuners. The Hauppauge Company offers a USB option. You connect an antenna to the “Stick” with is about the size of a memory stick. It uses a small remote control to operate the TV features. This model can also be connected to cable service but that won’t help much during a power outage. I have not tested this model although I have an earlier model from Hauppauge that works quite well.
There are several makers of similar tuners all of which retail at about $100. The key to optimum performance is a good antenna. Most of these come with cheap telescoping antennas that will not provide good reception. Use your regular “rabbit ears” antenna or better yet connect it to an outdoor antenna.
If you don’t want the hassle of using your lap top as a TV there are now some small LCD TVs that have digital tuners. They retail from about $99 to $150 and work like any portable TV. All have built in rechargeable batteries. While it might seem convenient, if you are without power for an extended period of time, it is nice to be able to pop in a few regular AAA batteries rather than sitting in your car charging your TV battery from your car’s power plug. Most of these small 7”models only get about 2 hours of use on a single charge.
You can find several models on Amazon.com. I have not seen any at the local electronic stores yet. I am sure they will be there soon. I expect to see better models at lower prices in a year or so. If you can wait, it is a good idea.
When I last wrote about this a year or so ago, there were only two portable DTV sets available and they were very expensive. Things are beginning to change. While I will discuss some options, I still feel that unless you absolutely can’t live without TV during a power outage you may wish to wait a bit longer for sets with more features and lower prices to emerge.
You have two options for receiving local over-the-air DTV broadcasts. You can purchase a tuner that plugs into a lap top computer and uses the computer screen to display the program or you can select from a number of small battery powered TV sets with digital tuners. The Hauppauge Company offers a USB option. You connect an antenna to the “Stick” with is about the size of a memory stick. It uses a small remote control to operate the TV features. This model can also be connected to cable service but that won’t help much during a power outage. I have not tested this model although I have an earlier model from Hauppauge that works quite well.
There are several makers of similar tuners all of which retail at about $100. The key to optimum performance is a good antenna. Most of these come with cheap telescoping antennas that will not provide good reception. Use your regular “rabbit ears” antenna or better yet connect it to an outdoor antenna.
If you don’t want the hassle of using your lap top as a TV there are now some small LCD TVs that have digital tuners. They retail from about $99 to $150 and work like any portable TV. All have built in rechargeable batteries. While it might seem convenient, if you are without power for an extended period of time, it is nice to be able to pop in a few regular AAA batteries rather than sitting in your car charging your TV battery from your car’s power plug. Most of these small 7”models only get about 2 hours of use on a single charge.
You can find several models on Amazon.com. I have not seen any at the local electronic stores yet. I am sure they will be there soon. I expect to see better models at lower prices in a year or so. If you can wait, it is a good idea.
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