Do you hate cables? I am asking you this because I do, and if I can get a wireless device that works at least as good as the wired one it's going to replace, then I won't think twice before making the switch. Unfortunately, wireless networking is not an option for me, but one of these days I had the pleasant surprise of discovering a new wireless printer(also add "scanner" and "copier" to that) from Lexmark, namely the X4850, so now I can simply move it around as much as I need, without getting any headache in the process!


The Lexmark X4850 can be easily shared wirelessly among multiple computers, and can also print Microsoft Office documents or PDFs right from USB flash drives. It comes with a pretty good software package from Lexmark, but why use it, when you can easily take advantage of other programs(I currently have another Lexmark model, and I know what I am saying)?

First, when scanning, you can easily import images right into IrfanView(one of my favorites), as well as into professional applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, but if you need text recognition facilities, then Abby FineReader is probably one of the best choices available.

Next, when it comes to printing, you can use virtually any program you can think of, as well as X4850's capability of printing right from USB drives and, finally, if you need to copy, then I suggest you to use the printer's software application, which is pretty good, after all, as I was saying earlier.

With two side-printing, a built-in 2.3-inch color LCD display, and full Windows/Mac OS X support, the Lexmark X4850 is a very interesting solution for a very good price. If you don't believe me, feel free to check this printer reviews site, and see for yourselves that this is one of the best choices for wireless printing at home and, maybe, even in small offices...

When it comes to holiday movies, you should either get a HD camera, or nothing. Well, some people have older models, and since "older" could mean less than a year, as well as a 10-years camcorder that you won't ever throw away ("oldies, but goldies", you know...), sometimes you need to get a little help from your computer. After all, there's nothing better than giving small retouches to your holiday movies and shots, to make them better, don't you think?


It is interesting to see that a company from Graz, Austria, entitled a computer program M.I.R., just like the Russian space station launched back in 1986... but let's get to the M.I.R. software now, shall we? Available for both Windows and Mac OS X, M.I.R. 1.3 is an application able to provide "a powerful solution for manual dust busting and any other kind of single image defects retouching issues".

To make a longer story short, it's enough to say that M.I.R. can fix dust spots, bad splices, tears and the like with only a few clicks, and this program's capabilities go as far as allowing you to work with 2K and even higher resolutions, with the help of the built-in smart caching and micro-loop technologies.

Basically, this software is about click & fix movie processing, but you can also work on individual frames, and let's not forget about one of those old problems that many people had at least once - you go somewhere, shoot some footage, then you want to print some pictures, but the movie quality is simply disappointing. I've been there too, and apart from jumping between a bunch of printer reviews, trying to find the best one for my purpose, I had no solution, because fixing the footage wasn't quite an option. From now on...I know what to use, because M.I.R. is the perfect tool for occasional users like me, but you can also employ it for professional tasks.

At last, you should know that the demo versions have 42MB (Windows), respectively 39MB (Mac OS X), and to find out more about the pricing, you should contact the producer, using this page. Good luck!

Scheduled for release around 2010, Microsoft Office 14 will be the next version of the Office software suite for Microsoft Windows(probably a version for Mac will be released too, but there's still a long time until then). Its developments started back in 2006, while Microsoft 2007 was almost completed, and now, Bill Gates has some information about this next Office version...


According to Microsoft's Chairman, Office 14 will enable online access to its applications, taking what has been started with Outlook Web Access one step further.

In a speech at the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, California, Gates said "Outlook Web Access is not the full version of Office, but if you want to go into a kiosk or an Internet cafe and browse and connect, it gives you plenty of functionality.", so it seems they kept an eye on Google for the last few years and finally decided to go online with Microsoft Office.

To be honest, I see nothing bad in Microsoft's tendency to follow Google, especially since we consider that a lot of free office suites are breathing down their neck, and I am talking especially about OpenOffice.org here.

These being said, it seems an early Beta version of Office 14 is expected later this year, with the commercial release planned for 2009, if everything works great, but I would rather bet on 2010...