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Tech Talk: TV Slideshows, Printer Fix, and Beta Software
By Bob DeLaurentis
Q. Is there a way to view personal photos on my
television?
A. A living room TV is a perfect venue to share
your family photo col-lection, and there are choices
to fit every budget.
Many televisions built in the last decade can al-
ready display photos. Older TVs may have a
memory card slot. Simply load photos onto a card
and enjoy! This is also the best choice if your house
does not have a W-Fi network.
The bundled software installed in SmartTV s often
support photo sharing via home networking.
your set lacks any built-in features or if they
seem too complex to navi-gate, consider a hard-
ware add-on. Two inexpensive options are the Am-
azon Fire TV Stick and Google Chromecast. Each
are available for about $30, and they simply plug
into any HDMI port on the TV. They also require a
power outlet, although most advertising pho-tos
omit that important element. Either one will do a fine
job.
Slightly more costly (about $50) is the Roku
Streaming Stick. Roku was an early leader in
streaming TV and alongside the programming op-
tions the stick can run an app that displays images
from Google Photos.
The most expensive option only makes sense if
you are already deeply invested in the Apple iCloud
Photo Library, or if you want a device that does a lot
more than display photos in your living room.
My advice is to follow the path of least resistance.
Amazon fans should go with a Fire Stick, Google
Photos fans can use any of these devices, and if
you do not yet have a preference, choose the least
expensive one just to get started. Once you set up
photo slideshows on your TV, you will be hooked.
Q. I have a Canon MX922 printer.
The printer was working just fine until we began to
get paper abrasion mes-sages. Can you tell me
what to do?
Troubleshooting printers is espe-cially chal-
lenging because there are so many different mod-
els, configurations, and computer systems in the
mix. But there are universal techniques which apply
to this type of problem.
For example, that model has a print-er driver setting
that adjusts the paper path to handle thicker pa-
pers, and once the setting is enabled, it will stay on
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until it is explicitly turned off again. I would look into
that first.
there is a specific error message, I search for
that message in Google, enclosed in quotation
marks. the results are not helpful, I try to focus
the search with additional words outside the quoted
message, words such as "turn off' or "disable."
The next step would be to visit the support section
on Canon's website, usa.canon.com, which has
quite a bit of freely accessible material for your mod-
el printer. Enter "MX922" into the site's search box
to view the resources I am looking at as I write this.
Unfortunately, tech support has become very
much a DIY skill. For better and worse, solutions are
usually available online, but they require patience to
find them.
Q. Do you recommend using public beta software?
Absolutely not. No. Never. Ever. In the last few
years summer has become public beta season, with
both Apple and Google releasing public beta ver-
sions of their future major updates, which usually
arrive in the fall as full-fledged releases.
Of course anyone enthusiastic about tech wants to
get his or her hands on the new new thing as quickly
as possi-ble. But there is a significant risk asso-
ciated with beta software, even if you keep excellent
backup copies.
Every one of these beta releases comes with a
warning that they are for testing purposes only, and
the manu-facturers will not help recover from any
problems you encounter.
There is another danger with beta releases.
As our devices have become more dependent on
cloud services, the inter-action between cloud data
and beta software is less reliable.
When it comes to public beta software, leave the
testing to the professionals and wait until the official
release.