It's been a while since my last blog entry. Work has been even more hectic than usual but hopefully over the worst!

I stumbled across this today and thought it was worthy of posting here :) It brought a smile to my face after a hard day at work!

Printer manufacturers are ripping off consumers by overcharging for printer cartridges, according to a study by the Consumer Association's Which? magazine.

Which? slams the cost of printer ink. A Colour HP cartridge, for example costs £29 or (put another way) 1.70 per millilitre. That's seven times more expensive than the cost of vintage champagne, it points out. A 1985 Dom Perignon costs 23p per millilitre.

Worse still, many printer cartridges give premature warnings that they are running out of ink.

Epson cartridges contain a chip that stop them working when ink runs low. The company says this is a measure to protect consumers from damaging their printer or product sub-standard prints.

But, after bypassing this system a Which? researcher was able to print many more pages at accepted quality before the ink ran dry. In one instance the researcher printed 38 per cent more pages during the tests. The least amount of extra pages he was able to print of on an Epsom printer was 17 per cent.

Last year an Office of Fair Trading investigation ruled that vendors should provide greater information about the cost and yield of replacement ink cartridges. The OFT has recommended that action be taken to develop a benchmark for ink cartridge measurement within the next year.

For its part, the Consumer Association advises consumers to steer clear of brand name printer cartridges and pick cheaper alternatives instead.

And it's not just consumers who are in the dark about the true costs of running a printer.

Forty five per cent of respondents to a survey published today by Kyocera Mita believe that printer vendors provided "very little" information about the running costs of their products, while a further 11 per cent feel that printer vendors "deliberately obscure" the costs of owning their products. Only five per cent of respondents consider that vendors were open about the true costs associated with their products.

Tracey Rawling Church, Head of Marketing at Kyocera Mita, commented: "The results of the survey show that the lack of information on TCO at the point of sale is not just a problem for consumers, but for business users too.

"Purchasers feel that they are being duped by vendors who provide very little information about the true cost impact of their products. With lifetime costs varying between different manufacturers by as much as 60 per cent, businesses can ill afford to make the wrong decision when selecting a printer fleet," she added. ®

His view of the game on tuesday night was as follows:

"It is utterly not true, that Real Madrid won last night. It was all trickery. In fact we crushed Real Madrid, Ronaldo was committing suicide in the box. We fed poison to Figo and beat him to death with our shoes. The reports that they scored three goals are scandalous lies, we hammered their goal keeper, then when we stopped crushing them, they would quickly put the ball in the net and take a photo of this. Scandalous lies. Some of you may have seen the film Escape To Victory, if you are familiar with the plot of this, you will know that the Spanish infidels are nothing but dogs and liars not to be trusted. Victory was ours."

While the war in Iraq has been very bad news for Saddam Hussein and the loyal members of his regime, one of them has landed a plum job at premiership outfit Aston Villa due to his high profile appearances on television. Mohammed Saeed Al- Sahhaf, the Minister of information is due to take up his role as soon as the current conflict ends, speaking to our reporter earlier today the minister said, "The call from Villa came out of the blue, Mr Ellis contacted me personally and said I was just the man to tell it like it is at Aston Villa", he continued " He told me how impressed he'd been with my performances on television and how he could hardly believe anyone else existed who held the truth in the same high regard as himself. I must admit to being in awe of Mr Ellis having watched his wonderful expression of the truth so many times on Television in the past and have modelled my recent performances on those of Mr Ellis.

He further added "Mr Ellis also expressed his sadness at the demise of my colleague Ali Hassan Al-Majid, with who he very much would have liked to discuss protest management techniques. " he then added " as soon as we have won this war I will be able to take up my position, but for now I'd like to express my delight at Aston Villa's 4-0 defeat of Arsenal at the weekend, the way we crushed them was magnificent and I would like to take the opportunity to assure Villa supporters that we will take next seasons European champions league campaign seriously, just as much as our defense of the league championship and both cups.

I will be able to offer some assistance with the acquirement of the quality players we will need to supplement our strong squad of world class internationals, as current world champions having won the last 3 world cups it is widely recognised the best players in the world come from my country, My contacts in Iraq will be enable me to bring in many of the current Iraq national squad and Mr Ellis assures me he will be able to get them into Britain as asylum seekers and this will have the added benefit of subsidising their top class wages with the state benefits they will be able to claim."

When asked to comment Mr Ellis said "this is a fantastic day for Aston Villa, no longer will we have to put up with the nonsense and half truths from the man on the terraces as we have had to in the past. The truth about Aston Villa can finally be told with the sincerity and integrity the fans deserve