I haven't really set a budget. I have a feeling this software will be my largest expense as I try to get this going. Its cost could put an end to this idea. Do you think it will cost me $5k? $10k? More? I haven't set a budget because I have no clue what custom software costs. I have most of the equipment I need, a commercial building in which to set up shop. I don't have everything already set up and existing revenue like a typical print shop that is already operating. My start up expenses will be significantly less than someone who doesn't already own a large format plotter and building. That would be ideal. Hopefully I can get some names next week.
I have no idea what it would cost. Maybe break the project into 2 parts. First part would be to hire someone to just help you figure out the details of what has to be done, maybe get an initial idea of what kind of time and cost you're looking at, then have that person help you shop it around and vet the quotes. Second part would be actually hiring someone to do the work.
I just got a Dell Inspiron 5575 with an AMD processor, 16gb ram and a big 2TB hard drive. The thing is slow because no SSD. How hard would it be for me to yank out the dvd drive (yes they still make those) and slap in a 128gb SSD, and boot Windows from that?
I'd find it pretty easy to do... you? I have no idea. Don't mean to be a dick, but it's totally subjective. I have no way of knowing your technical abilities. If you're just putting in the drive and changing boot devices and loading a brand new install of the OS on it? 1/10 technical hardness. Do you want to transfer your existing non-ssd content to the new drive? 6/10.
I guess my question is are there tutorials/resources that can walk me through this. I've replaced drives, screens, RAM on laptops before, but this will be my first SSD. What I'm after is an SSD for Windows and apps, and my hard drive for storage (music, photos, etc). I can't see that being impossible, although I've never done it. So, yeah....yanking dvd player, plugging in SSD and adapter, changing boot devices and fresh install of Windows 10 on the SSD.
So it appears that Windows 10 forced installed itself on my computer (or the little Missanthropic thought she was being helpful) and now my computer doesn't recognize my Canon MP240 printer. Canon's website states that they don't issue Drivers for Windows 10, only earlier versions. Any tricks or ideas, other than buying a new printer?
I have been using dropbox and carousel (yeah yeah I know) to auto upload my smartphone pictures to the cloud for years. Virtually every picture of my kids I have is in a massive disorganized mess of thousands of photos in a single folder in dropbox. Are there any programs out there that will automatically sort through, screen for quality (ie pick the best of the 12 blurry shots of my kid on a swing), screen out screenshots, and automatically create a best of say 50 pics taken per month over the past few years of data? This feels like a massive undertaking that could be handled with some algorithm management of meta data.
Theres nothing great out there that wont cost you a fortune. I would say your best bets are Photoshop Elements or Lightroom. Theres still some manual components, but Elements can check for contrasts and blurriness.
Eh... Lightroom/Elements still isn't going to really do anything but partially assist in the culling process. Still going to be tedious, I think. Google Photos actually does a bunch of interesting things automatically, you could look into the "stories" it creates and see if there's a good way to manage them - all I know is that I sometimes take a bunch of phone photos and end up with a little narrative that is automatically shown to me. It doesn't show any duplicates/bad copies and chronologically organizes them into a single event. You're giving over control in the presentation but if the option is simply not looking at them because of the volume, it might be a good option. Plus the new Google Photos search algorithm is creepily good. You can actually search for things like "birthday party" or "bike" or whatever.
But if he wants to clean up the photos at all, thats probably Google Photos' weakest point. Its great for creating collages and the free storage, but the editing options are pretty limited. Unless he would just rather have the organization, then thats the better option. Just my $0.02.
I bought a Seagate Slim 1TB external hard drive to replace my stolen iPod. I'm going to hook it up to the hidden second USB port under the dash. Question: is there any way to get the music on this device to shuffle/do a random selection? The sync in my 2014 truck is not the sophisticated touch screen navigation that, say, the Escapes have but its more modern than those two line digital readout a the older trucks have. I've never found a random function on it, and when I played off the iPod I never could get it to shuffle.
Unfortunately , you're almost completely at the mercy of the head unit. The HDD doesn't do any controlling of the music. If it is playing things in alphabetical order, then you do have one option - rename all of your files with a random set of letters at the beginning of the file name (e.g. "Justin Bieber - I'm a Real Woman" becomes "hfplsc Justin Bieber - I'm a Real Woman"). You could almost certainly automate this - I used to use a utility called Bulk Rename Utility but I don't know if it can handle an element of randomness... being on my phone in a 3rd world country makes it hard to research. The disadvantage of this is it would be the same shuffle, over and over until you re-renamed everything. Have you tried consulting Google for the shuffle function on your truck, or even asking in a car forum for your vehicle?
I'm also learning that Ford Sync does not read a storage device's typical formatting. I have to convert the drive to a FAT32 format and cross my fingers. Oh, and the cool trick to plug it into the hidden USB port in an F150? Yeah, Ford decided to make the hidden USB port a USB Mini. WHY IS FORD MAKING THIS SO DIFFICULT FOR ME.
Why not just get an iPod with bluetooth? Bluetooth in and then you get all the play functions on your phone. And 128 gigs of storage.
The only ipods I can find that they sell anymore are the Nanos or the Shuffles (or the Touch, but that's a waste). The hard drive was $80; I'm already annoyed that I had to spend that to replace a $400 iPod.
Can anyone recommend a good program to help organize media files? As an adendum to ^ that, if you recommend MusicBrainz Picard, how do you get it to function properly? My screens are not operating the way any of the tutorials suggest that they should.
The USB 3.0 ports on the right side of my laptop don't work. If I install fresh drivers from HP, they work, but as soon as I restart the computer, no bueno. My 2.0 USB all work fine, no issues. Ideas?
@$100T2 What OS? I would go into device manager, delete all of your USB devices, and re-scan. @Dcc001 Just music files, or music and video?