The technology that produced the ink jet printer began with an accident involving a soldering iron. Legend has it that in 1977 an engineer at Canon got too close to an ink-filled syringe with his soldering iron. Exposure to the heat boiled a tiny amount of the ink in the needle causing it to expand into a gas that pushed some ink out of the needle.
This accident was the basis for what Canon called bubble jet technology, a printing technique in which electrical resistors heat up tiny bubbles of ink, pushing ink droplets through a group of hair-thin nozzles. Competitors of Canon, have made adaptations to this thermal technology adding enhancements and patents.
Most color ink jet printers use four colors of ink: black, cyan (a pale blue), magenta and yellow. These colors are combined to create the colors one eventually sees on the page. To make this technique work, the computer uses printer driver software that determines the exact color for each dot. THEN, it figures out how many droplets of each ink color must fall on each dot to make that color. (A letter-sized page is more than 2,000 dots wide.)
Printing subtle color for photographs is complicated and producing that color with only four inks is slow, to boot. Printers are now being manufactured, specifically, for photography using six ink colors and paler shades of cyan and magenta to help create half tones.
The biggest variant that is encountered in ink jet printing is the paper used. Cheap paper works fairly well. However, photos, with big blocks of color, soak and buckle cheap paper. To obtain best results, white ink jet paper is recommended. For photos, the use of glossy photographic paper, though expensive, works best. A good and serviceable ink jet printer can be purchased for less than $100 and some computer dealers offer free ink jet printers as an enticement. Ink jet printers are a prime reason for

E-MAIL and AOL

You can compose E-mail when you are not actually connected to the AOL service. Just start the AOL software on your computer as you usually do, but don't type in your password. On the AOL tool bar you'll see that almost everything is dimmed but the Write/Compose Mail icon is still available for use. Click on it and start writing. Take all the time you need. You won't get signed off. You can even leave for hours, come back, and it's still there. When you're done composing your e-mail, sign on as usual. Once connected, you can then click the Send/Send Now button to dispatch your message.

Ed. note: I imagine other e-mail services would have a similar option.

AOL HISTORY TRAIL

The History Trail shows you the last 25 places you visited online. You can see this listing by clicking the down arrow to the right of the white text entry box on your toolbar.
To clear it, click on the My AOL menu, click Preferences. In the Preferences window click Toolbar. To clear the trail immediately, click Clear History Now. To clear the trail every time you sign off or switch screen names, select the Clear History after each Sign Off.... check box.

Relatives of Vincent Van Gogh

Verti Gogh - his dizzy aunt
Chica Gogh - cousin from Illinois
Tan Gogh - his dancing aunt
E Gogh - psychoanalyst nephew
Winnie Bay Gogh - niece who travels by van
Contributed by Janet Mann