I am constantly amazed how much technology comes into my home office and household. So here’s some quick hits on two things I disliked and one thing I liked. Call it the hooray and ixnay report.

Hooray for the Lenovo T43 ThinkPad notebook model 1871. No, it’s not a new netbook. Not new at all. It’s not small. In fact, don’t confuse with the Russian T-34 tank that beat the Germans in WWII. The 14.1 inch display makes it quite big and bulky. But I’m not here to talk about it’s display, processor or any of its innards. It has to most magnificent keyboard I have laid my hands on in a notebook. And I just got the notebook yesterday from IDG where I am editor of a new tech news aggregration site called ITnews.com. I could wail on the keyboard and feel was, as Woody Allen said, “transplendent” if such a non-word could have meaning. A friend of mine who works at Lenovo said to me: “We make the best keyboards in the world.” Now I believe him.

Ixnay on LG Chocolate cell phone.  I’ve had four or five of them in the past two years. No one could hear me. Then I couldn’t hear anyone. Yeah, I got one or two a little wet, but they should have lasted. Worst of all the nav wheel is so small, you end up hitting the wrong thing which is really bad when you shouldn’t be using a cell phone-like when driving. My phone cost money with two years activation about that long ago. A month ago, I noticed it was free. I wonder if it now falls into the “you can’t give those away” category.

And the booby prize of the day goes to the Hewlett-Packard PSC 1610 All-in-One printer. I like the idea of printing, copying and scanning and the PSC 1610 fit neatly within my tight workspace. But the paper feed never worked, giving me fits when the printer seized up telling me it was out of paper or there was a jam. Poor thing has a few of my fist marks on it. If I hold the paper just right, the feed catches,  but with mutiple copies, I never do better than two for three. It’s an enormous pain.

I did get some satisfaction, though. When an engineer from H-P dinged me for something in one of my prior engineering blogs, I told him his printers STINK.

I’ve had a new Canon PIXMA MX310 in the box, but hate configuring printers so much it’s been sitting on the floor for a month. And I had a bad Canon printer before, but could not bring myself to buy another H-P because the PCS 1610 was not the first bad one, either. I also want to use the H-P until the ink runs dry given the extortionate price of cartridges.