What is a GPS doing on a computer blog? Well, this particular GPS is a converged device. Not converged with an MP3 player (although it can play MP3s), but converged with a Windows Mobile handheld computer.

It is is the HP Compaq iPAQ rx5915 PDA, otherwise known as the HP iPaq rx5915 Travel Companion. The design is more like that of a GPS, although it is a fully functional Pocket PC with Wi-Fi (b and g), Bluetooth, standard Windows Mobile applications and it runs Windows Mobile 5.0. The main difference it that is has 2GB of onboard flash ROM, in which the maps are stored. The device comes preloaded with the maps for North America (US and Canada) including Alaska and Hawaii as well as Tom Tom navigation software, so after the first charge it is ready to go. The screen also has transflective antiglare coating designed to reduce glare and improve readability outside.

Prior to an upcoming trip I decided to update the map files, since I haven’t updated them since getting the iPaq rx5915 almost two years ago.

The installation instructions with the map update were not very positive – to get it to work you either had to delete the “iPAQ GPS” folder from Rom, which meant all your maps and the mapping software would be gone if the update wasn’t successful, or “Run the update four times. The fourth time the update is run, it will proceed successfully…. This map update requires at least 45 minutes to complete“.

I tried the map update once, and got an error message about an invalid system configuration. After re-reading the install instructions figured I would rather take a chance on map data which was a bit out of date.

If you have a PC you probably will need a printer sometime.

Printers are probably my least-favorite piece of hardware. Often they just mean trouble, but a printer is an essential component in a computer system. My dislike of printers probably comes from the days of the dot-matrix printer (anyone remember those?), and the mainframe printer. I can still remember reports printed on 132 character wide reams of paper on a huge mainframe printer. I can’t say I feel much nostalgia for those days.

Anyway, to the present. Currently because of my fairly basic printing needs, I use a small monochrome laser printer. The HP LaserJet 1020 Laser Printer is a small footprint, low cost printer. Another highly-rated monochrome laser printer is the Lexmark E250dn, which adds a built-in Ethernet connector for sharing the printer over a network, as well as a built-in duplexer to help with double-sided printing.

If I had the desk space I would definitely consider a multi-function printer again, They cannot be beat for the sheer functionality. Being able to scan, fax and make copies as well as print with the same device is great. The Canon Pixma MP530 is a highly rated all-in-one printer, although it lacks networking support and media card slots.

I’m thinking it might be time to buy a new printer — which, of course, means getting a copier/scanner or scanner/fax device along with the printing functionality.

I’m an HP and Epson person through and through. I mean, does anybody else make printers?

A colleague had sent me the link to a video put together by Kodak, which was pretty entertaining and got me to thinking maybe I had options outside of the ones I’m used to choosing.

The video gets across the message that maybe you don’t have to pay a fortune for ink cartridges. Could it be time for me to buy a printer for just a bit more money and then restock the ink for half or two-thirds of what I’m accustomed to spending?

As I was pondering that prospect, columnist Katherine Boehret at AllThingsDigital, tackled the very same topic. In a review of three multi-function devices, she poses the question: How can you really compare the total cost of ownership for a printer when the amount of printing any given ink cartridge does is so variable?

As she reports, “When measuring pages printed from a black cartridge, Kodak, HP and Canon claim 342, 200 and 219 pages, respectively.” (In this case, Kodak’s cartridges are the least expensive of the three.)

The Kodak ESP3, the model from Kodak that Boehret reviews, fares well — but so do the other two printers she looks at, the HP Photosmart C4280 and the Canon PIXMA MP470. Her focus is on the photo-manipulation aspects of the devices, which, as I wrote about in “Should You Publicly Profess Printer Love?,” I’ve already got covered in my life. I just need a workhorse printer that I can churn out pages from when the need is there.

And there’s something really attractive about being able to buy my next black ink cartridge for ten bucks. But Kodak? Canon? Aren’t those the photo folks? Next, I suppose you’ll tell me that HP is making cameras…