What do you do with your printer toners after they run out of ink?

For most of us, it’s straight to the trash for these spent cartridges. But did you know that they can be recycled and re-made into useful products?

To encourage such a practice, five major printer brands – Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, and Lexmark – have come together in a joint initiative to offer collection points for these used inks and toners.

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Singapore Expo is a long way away for most people, other than folks living in the east, so before you head down to Sitex, Singapore’s last quarterly IT bazaar for 2011, check out some of the standout deals that people have been putting up on brochure sites.

Yes, in the past, you had to squeeze your way through the halls for some small bargain, collecting loads of brochures on the way. Today, you can check out what’s on offer online before heading down for a more targeted trip.

Here are some great deals so far at this weekend’s show. We’ll update this page as we get more info.

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Another one of Singapore’s quarterly tech bazaars, Comex 2011, opens its doors today to thousands of bargain hunters eager to cash in on discounts – or perceived discounts – on laptops, headphones, printers, TVs, broadband plans and just about anything tech you can find on the island.

One of the most hotly-awaited deals – HP’s TouchPad – has already been sold out this morning. Only 100 units of each version of the tablet (16GB and 32GB) went on sale today and the queue numbers were snapped up in no time. A queue had formed as early as 4am, according to the good folks from The Straits Times Digital Life.

HP is still selling the tablet from S$118 in the coming days, but you’d have to love queues to get in line for one of these fire sale items.

Meanwhile, here are a few other deals we’d be interested with: …

We already know how great the large-screen smartphone or tablet computer is as a remote controller to play music or movies from your PC server. Now, there’s also an iOS app that lets you control your Xerox machine and send documents to print – directly from your handheld device.

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Are we in the worst recession since the 1930s? Doesn’t seem like it when you see the long lines of people waiting to sign up for a StarHub line or those snapping up LCD TVs like there was no tomorrow at the IT Show.

When I turned up at around noon, the Suntec area was was already a nightmare to drive around. Was going to give up after being stuck in my car, when I finally managed to enter Marina Square from the back (near Ritz Carlton), and guess what, there were dozens of empty carpark lots. Amazing how the security folks just happily block off all the carparks in the area and list them as “full”.

Anyway, I walked around and found some bargains – not downright dirt cheap, but somewhat tempting, especially if you are in the market for some of these gadgets. …

Besides the usual TVs and laptops, there are other little bargains to be had at Sitex.

We seem to have forgotten that printers were once the thing to buy at these shows. Visiting the HP booth brought to my attention this nice little gem of a colour laser printer.

The Color LaserJet CP1515n costs a nice S$479 and comes with networking and 96MB of RAM for faster printing. Compared to a slightly cheaper S$379 LaserJet CP1215, this one seems a better deal with all the added features for a SOHO. Oh, and there’s free delivery for these colour lasers (they’re damn heavy, after all).

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