New Sanford Products Make Writing On Difficult Surfaces Easy

As one of the leaders in writing products, Sanford's brands are often the first ones that come to mind when thinking about a specific product. Permanent marker? Sharpie. Dry erase marker? Expo. Label printers? Dymo. Their range of brands has something for every writing need. They aren't just sitting tight either, with two of their brands introducing products designed for some particularly stubborn surfaces.

Sharpie Extreme Markers

Sharpie markers are plenty versatile and leave bold marks on most surfaces, but the Sharpie Extreme is here to fill in some of the gaps such as warm weather. The Extreme is designed to resist fading in the sun, with protection against ultraviolet exposure. It also adheres better to tricky surfaces such as plastic, with better adhesion that holds up longer than traditional markers.

Uni-Ball 307 Gel Pens

Meanwhile, Uni-Ball is rolling out the 307, a continuation of its popular 207 line. Like its predecessors, the 307 is a smooth, reliable gel pen. What it adds to the table is a remarkable ability to dry on glossy paper. While it isn't instantaneous, it dries much faster than other gel pens we tried. Glossy paper has never been friendly to ink (including printers), so this is a big step forward.

Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo

One more Sanford update to make your life easier- Dymo is running a promotion where buying a specified number of labels can net you a free printer. This is great for expanding printing operations, registration tables or other places where Dymo printers come in handy.

Tax Season's Greetings

There's an old notion of getting a visit from the tax man. As if today's income tax is some reverse Santa Claus taking a percentage of toys from boys and girls based on income level and number of dependents. We should be so lucky. There is no gentleman knocking on our doors and handing us a bill. It's up to each individual to recognize that it's that time of year. They have to do their own math to figure out what they owe (or pay someone to determine what to pay). Most importantly, everyone needs to have the pertinent information available in order to prepare their taxes.

For businesses, that means they not only need to have their own finances in order, they need to provide W2 forms for their employees. The sooner they're sent, the happier the employee.

Tops Laser W-2 Forms

For smaller businesses that don't outsource their payroll, Tops makes it easy to order and print their own essential tax forms. These W-2 forms are compatible with laser printers and can be printed directly from payroll software. Tops also provides envelopes to ensure security, along with 1099 forms and matching envelopes.

The real key to avoiding stress at tax time is to be prepared in advance. Throughout the year, keep all tax information in some sort of file. Track deductions throughout the year with a planner rather than try to go back through old receipts and figure out which purchases are applicable. This helps in the event of an audit as well, as that kind of documentation is hard to forge in hindsight when planners from the previous year go out of stock. If you're filling out the forms by hand, you'll also want a calculator, a reliable pen with anti-alteration features, and, let's not kid ourselves, correction tape.

Nature's Undo Button

Finally, with so much sensitive information out in the open, some of it may need to go away when the filing's done. Households and businesses alike will want to make sure their shredder is up for the task.

Jetstream Premier by Uni-Ball

If there's one thing I'm pretty good at it's judging. Some of my friends have even told me to put away my judging finger. I guess my ability to make snap judgments, even when they are wrong, leads my interest in Judge Dredd and the Pope. Even if they make a decision that ends up being wrong... too bad, it was correct at the time.

Speaking of him (Judge Dredd, not the Pope), have you seen the trailer for the new Judge Dredd movie? For some reason they have left "Judge" out of the title. That doesn't make any sense it's like leaving "Warlord of Mars" off the title of a storied science fiction franchise.

That's not the point though. The point is I like to make snap judgments. One of the things I like to judge quickly are pens. If a pen feels light or has more girth than it needs I'm pretty quick to push it aside as an also ran. If you recall, the weight of the pen was featured heavily in my review of the InkJoy pen series. So when a Jetstream Premier from Uni-Ball crossed my desk the other day, I ripped open the packaging, dropped the pen in my pen cup and went about the rest of my day-to-day business. When I had a few moments to think, I went back and picked up the Uni-Ball Jetstream and it didn't pass my completely subjective size-to-weight ratio test (not a good sign). In the interest of fairness to the people at Uni-Ball I thought I'd give it a quick test run and see just how poorly it compared. I clicked the clicker and HOLY CUSS!

Uni-Ball Jetstream Premier Rollerball Pen

Much to my shock, the pen has an almost silent click. I don't know if you've ever sat in on a meeting with a obsessive-compulsive-pen-clicker and an anti-pen-click-stick-in-the-mud but the fireworks fly. This pen could potentially solve all the pen click-related problems that have been keeping the United Nations from actually making progress toward ending famine and getting Bono's plan for world peace off the ground.

I was sure that the silent click of the pen was just a gimmick and that it would be a standard ballpoint pen, but I was wrong again. The black ink from the Uni-Ball Jetstream surpassed the much loved InkJoy. The lines were smoother and darker. It had me intrigued... what else is there to know about this pen?

I went to Uni-Ball's page, since I had thrown away the packaging, to see what they had to say about their pen. They identified the silent action and smooth ink, but also touted its quick drying ink. As a right-handed person who writes small I rarely run into the problem with smearing ink when a portion has yet to properly dry. So I had to setup a test to give it a run through. I'll draw a circle with my right hand and immediately drag my left pointer finger through it to see how it smears. True to their word the Uni-Ball Jetstream Premier does dry faster than the competition. The difference between the Jestream and the InkJoy was almost negligible, but I'm sure it makes a difference to somebody. Just for the sake of argument I performed the same test with a Gel pen and they just got ink all over my finger.

Is the Uni-Ball Jetstream a nice pen? Most definitely.
Is the Uni-Ball Jetstream worth the premium price? Maybe if you are left handed or are a compulsive pen clicker, but not to me.