(no subject)

[rivka]

I finally got an account number for my new grant!

That means that I get to start buying stuff now. Like computers. We've been anxiously hovering over our e-mail, waiting to hear from the Business Office, because the word is that starting June 1st you won't be able to buy a PC with Windows XP on it anymore. And I'm damned if I'm going to run Vista.

On my shopping list: a desktop and a laptop for me. A desktop for Steve, who is my right-hand man on this grant. 24-inch monitors for both of us. I've got $3000 budgeted for "office supplies" - that buys an awful lot of file folders and pens. Let's see... a cashbox. Thumb drives. Software? A fun twirly office-supplies organizer? Some of the supplies money will have to go for postage, thanks to a fairly ridiculous IRB call.

I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies. What a lovely problem to have.

(Sorry, don't mind me. This is the first time I've ever had untrammelled purchasing power, and it's going to my head a bit.)

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

A printer? With extra print supplies bought at the same time, because it is a pain in the neck to run out and then discover they are hard to find?

A secure filing cabinet?

Coloured markers, coloured post-it notes, coloured paper clips ...

Sorry, don't mind me, I just finished spending my little professional expense reimbursement account. After the Nintendo Wii and the jelly beans (seriously!) I just bought stuff at Staples until it was used up.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I can actually think of plenty of potential professional activities involving jelly beans, but I'm wondering about the Wii.

I have wondered whether I ought to have my own printer. The networked ones are usually fast and reliable, but.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I didn't actually buy a Wii, although having rented one for two weeks, two years in a row, I could have by now. My students were doing a lab about measuring position, velocity, and acceleration. In one exercise, I gave them pedometers and GPSes and instruction manuals and let them figure out a way to compare their results. In another exercise, I gave each group half an hour with Wii Sports and the instruction to test its functionality and limitations.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Oh, spending grant money on office supplies is the best!!!! Go you and have fun!!!

[kate_nepveu]

Woo! Buying useful stuff!

(I don't know how NIH is on reallocating money within the grant, but "office supplies" might be broad enough anyway that if you have some left over, it might be good to keep around for rainy days . . . )

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies. What a lovely problem to have.

Yes, it is! Have fun.

[telerib.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere on the 'Net that there's some clause or other which allows certain computer hardware manufacturers to keep including Windows XP on the computers. It's *along with* Vista, but what folks do is take the thing out of the box, remove the Vista and install the XP.

(But if your problem is that UMD is going to Vista, then this is of no use.)

I feel dumb - I got a new laptop when my old one died, and didn't remove the Vista. Now I have the Vista versions of three or four important pieces of software that I use, which makes me reluctant to go back. Vista's annoying, but not sufficiently so to make me tear it out by the roots and sow the hard drive with salt. But I do wish I'd just stuck with XP.

[brooksmoses]

Yes. Sufficiently fancily-named versions of Vista (Business and Ultimate, IIRC, which I may or may not) come with a clause in the license that gives back-version rights, which means that it gives you the right to run XP on the machine if you have an install disk for it.

(With my last office computer, I was in a similar position with Windows 2003 -- which I didn't want, but which had replaced Windows 2000 in our ordering list. So I got a Windows 2003 license and a Windows 2000 install disk through our purchasing department, and everything was happy.)

Reportedly, Dell will be selling computers with the installation process and so forth for this already done. The article I read said that they hadn't yet figured out how to tweak their ordering system to deal with the clause from Microsoft that means they can only do this if the customer explicitly requests it first, but I presume they'll solve that pretty quickly if/when it becomes an issue.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies.

Lots 'n lots a' Post-it Notes!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I have no idea how to spend $3000 on office supplies."

You need a label machine.

B

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I see by Googling that these are legitimate pieces of office equipment, but in my head I just went back to the late 70s/early 80s and those squeezy things you used to make labeling tapes. My friend had one that was painted to look like an alligator for some reason and I coveted it with all my heart.

OMG! I could get a miniaturized one to use as a keychain! (http://cgi.ebay.com/DYMO-LABEL-MAKER-Keychain-mini-Basic-Fun-NEW-mini-NR_W0QQitemZ110225507632QQihZ001QQcategoryZ3628QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247) ...They don't seem to come in psychedelic patterns anymore, alas.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

If you're going to have to spend money on postage anyway, a postage meter is a handy thing to have.

I'd also examine what (if any) expenses you're likely to have for presentation of data. Will you be buying poster-creation supplies out of that budget line? Can you spend that money on paying for the Graphics & Repro staff do them up for you?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Poster preparation is a separate line item, actually. I've got $500 budgeted a year, which covers about 2.5 posters.

I'm still waiting for the unit coordinator to get back to me about the postage issue. She's not sure how they'll want to handle having me send out a few hundred letters.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

A flatbed scanner might be a handy thing to have, especially if it has decent OCR capability. While we mostly use our copier/scanner/fax here in the office to do this, it's sometimes really handy to just scan an invoice or something similar, and email the PDF to whoever needs it, or just to keep it for archival purposes.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

A flatbed scanner is an awesome idea, especially because we don't have a copier/scanner/fax. Thanks!

[naomikritzer]

A printer, toner, printer paper, more toner, and lots and lots of boxes of Pilot rolling ball pens (V7 or V5, depending on whether you prefer Fine or Extra-Fine) including some in funky colors because you never know when you'll need to mark up a document or something.

Pencils and an electric pencil sharpener. And some good-quality staplers because they're so much nicer to use than the cheaper ones, especially if you outfit them with high-quality staples. It's amazing what a difference it makes.

I love buying office supplies.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

An exciting suite of colored pens is a great idea. I never use pencils for any purpose (except maybe putting temporary markings on a wall) because I'm a lefty and write in the overhand hook position. Pencils = big shiny graphite smudge on the side of my hand. The best thing about 6th grade was finally getting to use pens for my schoolwork.

I've thought about buying a printer. (The machine itself would come out of my computers budget, which is generous - I was trying to think of ways to spend it down.) We have network printers that are fast and reliable, although sometimes you do get stuck behind the jerk who is using the color printer to print 300 copies of a flyer because we don't have a color copier.

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Well, you can always get one of these: Xerox 8860MFP (http://www.office.xerox.com/multifunction-printer/color-multifunction/phaser-8860mfp/enus.html), the printer only version Xerox 8860 (http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-8860/enus.html), or the smaller cousin with the lower capital/higher per sheet cost tradeoff Xerox 8560 (http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-8560/enus.html).

The solid ink technology these use is fast, quiet—after the initial startup/warmup clunking and thunking—and high resolution (full is 2400x560, plenty for functioning as a photo printer). It's also resolution/colour independent for speed, because it's a one pass process. (Text and full page photos come out at the same speed.) Better still, the ink comes in small solid blocks, and involves no heavy metals or major amounts of packaging or specialty recycling.

Because it's a surface sublimation thermal process, you can print on more or less anything in the way of paper, and water beads off the ink. Prolonged pressure—being stuck to a steel cabinet with a rare earth magnet for six months—will cause the ink to stick to some plastic surfaces (the non-slip disk on the rare earth magnet).

Xerox claims the 88** family are the same cost for colour as for black and white; since their claims for the 85** family (I have one, and so does my team at work) are conservative, I suspect you can trust them on this point.

Oh, and they're true Postscript—certified Adobe Postscript 3— so they play very well indeed with Macs and PDFs.

The 8850 at work has had something north of 20,000 sheets put through it; we have had not one paper jam. (Various other teams have now bought four more of the things. Since we're supposed to be standardized on HP and this involves much hoop jumping, I am not the only person impressed with the output.)

And no, I don't work for Xerox. But I think this tech kicks the laser printer's behind.

-- Graydon

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Eeep! I didn't know that about Vista. I refuse to buy a Vista machine. Thanks for the headsup (Vista is the devil for everything, and my university refuses to load it on any machines!).

If you can spend it on postage, I would stockpile a bunch of the Forever stamps.

[(Anonymous)]

Heh. It all depends. I have at least $3k of specialized software. And an ergonomic keyboard.

But mmm, rollerball pens. Go you.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Er, that was me.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yay! I win! I guessed it was you from the description.

I don't need to purchase most of the software I use; the only really customized thing I'll have is research protocol management software, and I am already paying the university's Bioinformatics Core to provide that for me in a separate line item. I might upgrade to the next version of SPSS, and I suppose that I'll have to buy myself Endnote reference management software again... but yeah, 90% of the time I just need Microsoft Office, and we have a site license for that.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'd talk to the local admin assistants to see what they use a lot of. I think your idea of thumb drives is excellent. We keep a store of 4GB SanDisk Cruzer thumb drives in the file cabinet because this project creates ridiculous amounts of data.

Also, budget for printer paper. I bet you use a lot of it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Also, budget for printer paper. I bet you use a lot of it.

We do, but printing and copying comes out of our overhead. Fortunately!

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

Scotch tape and dispenser.

Bulletin board and pins/thumbtacks, and/or whiteboard and marker and eraser. Magnets if you have a metallic surface to stick things on.

Legal pads to take notes/doodle on?

Buy the "forever" stamps NOW -- postage goes up May 12th!

You might want to save some $$ for later. You're liable to realize a couple of months down the line "We need (whatever)!"

Get a catalog from Staples, Office Max, or whatever office-supply place is handy to you, and start browsing.

[kate_nepveu]

Forever stamps are not a good investment (reference) but may be convenient.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time I had the opportunity to outfit a brand new preschool classroom. I was in heaven - all that money to spend on anything I wanted and not a penny of it mine.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

*faints from jealousy*

"Hello, Lakeshore Learning? Please send me one of everything."

[txobserver.livejournal.com]

Thumb drives for sensitive personally identifiable data sounds like a security nightmare to this computer security consultant. Get advice for a secure (encrypted) archive/backup system, using removable or network attached media. I suspect there is some IT organization at your university who can advise you on this.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Thumb drives for sensitive personally identifiable data sounds like a security nightmare to this computer security consultant.

Personal identifiers are stripped from the data before it ever winds up in the files we actually work with. The abovementioned Bioinformatics Core people will be maintaining a secure HIPAA-compliant database held (and backed up) securely on their servers, which will hold all data with PIDs.

On the files we need to carry around for data analysis, study participants are informatively identified as "A001," "A002," et cetera. No one associated with this study needs to have personal identifiers on their own computer or on a thumb drive, so they won't.

[txobserver.livejournal.com]

Whew! Sounds just right.

[selki.livejournal.com]

It makes me so happy to hear of good data/privacy management practices!

And yay, office supplies! Everyone's already hit the suggestions I would have made. I visit those kind of stores every once in a while just for fun. Show me not your di'monds, lemme see the Sharpies!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It makes me so happy to hear of good data/privacy management practices!

I had to write all that stuff out in the original grant application, and then again for my local IRB. It's something that is taken increasingly seriously these days.

I'm not a computer expert, but the Bioinformatics Core people create HIPAA-compliant research databases all day every day. I am happy to lean on their expertise.

[selki.livejournal.com]

yay BioInformatics Core people! *dances around at the thought of working to set up and support HIPAA-compliant DBs and apps and so on*

I'm glad it's being taken increasingly seriously, what with laptops going missing here and there, with perhaps even more of a theft/loss problem with thumb drives.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Can you buy a digital camera and memory card under that heading? There's probably a lot of stuff that you want to document at one time or another - from a quick snap of a handwritten note to, well, I don't know what, but it's the sort of thing that would come in handy for a myriad uses.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Actually, because of privacy issues, there is almost nothing that I would want to document with a photograph. Which is a shame - I'd love to get NIH to buy me a new camera. ;-)

[curmudgn]

the word is that starting June 1st you won't be able to buy a PC with Windows XP on it anymore.

Not quite true--the cutoff date's June 30th, not June 1st. And what OEMs are not allowed to do is to sell XP licenses after June 30th. Stay with me. That's an important distinction.

What you WILL be able to do, at least if you buy from one of the big boys like my employer (very VERY large PC maker . . . one-syllable name . . . you've probably heard of us), is to buy a system that has a OEM license for Vista but which has XP loaded on the hard drive. Vista Business and Vista Ultimate edition licenses allow us to do this legally through the beginning of 2009. (Maybe longer, if Steve Ballmer caves again.)

The drawback is that if you have a hard drive fail, and you don't already have your own XP installation media that you got with some other XP-licensed machine, you're stuck having to install Vista once the drive is replaced. (Or you could install Linux, but that's a whooooooooooole different can o' worms.) We absolutely are not allowed to send you an OEM XP installation CD so you can reinstall XP on the system. Once the sausage has gone through the grinder, you can't turn the handle backward and get the pig out again, so to speak.

Office supply consultant

[lynsaurus.livejournal.com]

I know someone whose ability to anticipate needs for supplies, find the best price, and organize them effectively ought to earn her a title role in an adventure comic. I bet you know who I mean.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I have a Hewlett Packard Officejet Pro L7680 All-in-One Printer, Fax, Scanner, Copier. I've never used the fax function and have only used the scanner once or twice, but the printing and photocopying is AWESOME. It does double-sided printing and photocopying with the press of one button, and you can do fancy things like photocopy single-sided onto double-sided or vice versa. It also has a document feeder on the top which will copy double-sided, in colour!

Quite honestly it's the fastest printer I've ever used. The XL artridges last around 1500 sides of A4 (no idea what that is in American). I make one copy of exam papers or books manually, then do all the rest using the sheet feeder.

It also has an automatic document archive system, so you can scan in receipts or invoices and save them to a file on the network.