I'd sort of half been following Ann's thread about making calendars, not really paying attention. Suddenly, this weekend, the light went on in my brain and I thought "wouldn't it be a great idea to make a calendar for my friends". Remembered that Staples had been mentioned, so went along to check the price and turnaround. $19.95 (CDN) printed on white cardstock and bound and it would take a couple of days. Told me to bring the prints in and they'd make it up. "Great" I thought and trotted off home to sort out some nice photos. Picked up a couple of packets of HP everyday semi-gloss photo paper and a new cartridge so I could do a trial to see how it would look. Back home, I picked out the photos I wanted to use. Discovered that I'd given away all the prints to my friends so I had to scan all the negatives. No big deal, I thought. Staples will only be scanning the prints and I had to scan anyway to make up my trial calendar. All went well until I hit a strip of 160VC negatives. I just couldn't get a decent scan from the Minolta Scan dual at all. Another lightbulb went on. Hmm, Bruce had mentioned vuescan with the minolta (I think). Downloaded a trial version and re-scanned. Apart from the $40 watermark on the image, it was perfect! Purchased it straight away. (already this calendar is becoming expensive!) Brilliant! I wish I'd bought this software earlier. Scanned away happily, nice and large to fit letter sized paper, put the images in order, named them january, february etc. and wrote them all to CD ready to deliver to Staples. Meanwhile, I printed off the calendar using a standard template from Word on the HP semi-gloss. It looked good. I was pretty damn pleased with myself, I can tell you! Then the dog came in from outside, wet paws and all, ran upstairs and bounced off the bed where I had placed the completed sheets. I now had a dented and smudged calendar. "Never mind" I thought to myself, "This is only for practice and I'm keeping it for myself anyway". Off I went to Staples with my CD of 13 images - one for each month plus the front cover. Lady at Staples takes the details and informs me that they charge $3 for opening EACH image on the CD whereas if I'd brought the print it would cost nothing. HUH????? I've done all the work and they want to charge me for it? An extra $39 on top of a calendar that costs $19?? Insanity! Quick mental calculation tells me that it's probably still cheaper for me to have them print up three calendars than do it myself bearing in mind that a colour cartridge costs $60CDN (ex tax) and paper is about $20-30 a box so I leave it with them and sulk off. One of the reasons I wasn't going to do it myself was because the printer I have is not particularly new and I was worried about fading. Then Paul (hubby) pointed out that each page only has to last a month! Well, that convinced me to do it myself. Found a nice double sided semi-gloss/matte paper from HP and off I went. Rankled by the charge for pulling my files off a CD I went back to Staples and cancelled the order. I reckon mine are nicer anyway (though I say so myself...)
And that's my story. --- Wendy Beard Mosaid Technologies Inc 11 Hines Rd, Kanata, Ontario K2K 2X1, Canada
