Cutting Print Ink and Paper Costs – PT. 2
Here is part 2 to cutting ink and paper costs.
Use your printer’s own software to control the amount of ink used, the number of pages per sheet, and printing on both sides of the paper.
1.) Controlling the amount of ink used: Most of today’s printers include some type of software CD that you can install on your computer. This comes in handy to show the status of the printer, ink levels, and printer settings. Navigating through this software and getting to know the tools will help you on ink costs. There should be a setting on printing called a “draft mode”. What this setting does is, it tells the printer to use less ink. You will notice a fainter black and not high quality colors. To be honest, it is only noticeable when printing high quality color documents but for black text it is perfectly fine.
2.) Pages per sheet mode: This printer setting tells the printer to put 2 A4 size pages on a single side of paper. In essence then, you are cutting the amount of paper used by half.
3.) Duplex or Double-sided printing: Simply put printing on both sides of the paper. This not only reduces paper cost but also the bulkiness of a project. Couple this with the pages per sheet mode and you can cut your paper usage by 4 times.
If you want to really want to save money with printing, take a look at these options:
Inksaver- software claims to save you money by managing the amount of ink usage.
Greenprint- a free download for home users that identifies parts of a document that are blank and wasteful to print plus it has a PDF creator.
Also spend the extra time proof reading and spell checking your documents before you print them. In that way, you won’t have to print a second, third or fourth copy to get it right. Secondly, try to extend your margins and making the font 1pt. smaller.
In addition, keep extra paper and ink cartridges on hand so you don’t have to rush out to the store, spending gas or pay overnight delivery charges to get them quickly. If you missed part 1 of the article, you may view it here.
Tags: cheap ink, Ink Cartridges, printer ink