Top Tips on How Printing Smart Cuts Costs
Brand-name printer ink and toner cartridges (such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lexmark, Brother, Dell, Epson, Okidata and Xerox) are expensive, and printing costs money. Inevitably, the ink and toner cartridge you’re using has a tendency to run out at the most inopportune moment, stopping you in your tracks and costing you big money. Additionally, if you’re wasting paper, productive time and paying too much for laser and ink printer cartridges, InkMart has the 10 best tips to help you reduce your printing expenses.
So take a look at these easy-to-use printer tips:
Creating Documents
Obviously, the first step is creating the documents you need to print, and you can actually choose fonts for your document that use less ink or toner when printing, which makes them ecofriendly (such products as Ecofont) will save you about 20% compared to standard fonts. Also, try to use less text in bold (italics often emphasizes just as well and uses less ink), use smaller fonts or font sizes and write your text concisely.
Reviewing and Revising Documents
Thoroughly review your document on your monitor for errors before printing and encourage anyone else reviewing the document to do likewise, rather than giving them a hard copy, unless they must handwrite edits. This reduces the number of copies you will print overall, and you’ll not only save money on ink and toner, but paper as well.
Optimize Your Printer
The right settings optimize savings.
Draft settings - Don’t manually choose the “low quality” or “draft” settings every time you print a draft, make this your default setting. You’ll have to choose the “high quality” setting manually, but only for the last printer run. This also makes your work or staff’s work more productive in terms of time.
Print layout - You may be able to print several pages on a single piece of paper or you may be able to print on both sides of a paper. Both options can save tons of ink/toner and paper. Please remember that if you change settings here, every print job will be printed like this per default, so be sure to change it back if it’s not your norm.
Print in black and white - Black ink or black toner cartridges are cheap compared to color ink and toner cartridges, so printing in black when you don’t really need the color will save you bucks. Make this option your default, and only select color when you’re really to roll out the finished document.
Reduce resolution – 300 dpi (dots per inch) are usually sufficient, and high resolutions only need to be used on high quality photo paper.
Selecting What to Print
Only print what you need. Just print the parts of a document you need, if you don’t need the whole document, and don’t print pictures and graphics when you only want the text, etc. If someone is making handwritten edits to the text, you can skip printing the graphics, unless they specifically want to review those as well. You can opt out of printing graphics by changing preferences in your print menu.
Print Previews
Before you print anything, use the print preview option and eyeball the document pages for any odd page endings, etc. that may occur. This eliminates unnecessary print runs and saves paper, ink and toner, and time.
Keep Printing “Til You Can’t Print No More, Pardner!”
If your printer reports that the ink or toner cartridge is empty or very low, you may have 10-30% left in the cartridge, so keep printing until the printer refuses to print any longer. However, at the first warning that your ink or toner printer supplies are low, make sure you have a replacement cartridge or order one ASAP.
Green Printing
There are innovative software programs on-line that analyzes print jobs and alerts you to any potential waste of resources (e.g., GreenPrint). It’s easy to eliminate unwanted pages, and you can print your document to a PDF, requiring no ink or toner and no paper at all. Additionally, it can tell you how much paper you have saved. How’s that for incentive to keep on doing so?!
Printing Website Pages
Use on-line website editors (such as PrintWhatYouLike.com) to optimize other web pages printing, and eliminate ads and white spaces. Just enter the URL of a page you’d like to print, click start and begin editing.
Choose Your Ink and Toner Cartridge Vendor Wisely
Comparison shop and you’ll likely find that on-line vendors will save you more time and money than the local office retail and discount stores. On-line vendors, such as InkMart, are certainly more price competitive, have a wider selection and carry a larger stock of printer products, including POS printers for retailers, but ask these questions before selecting any vendor:
· Are their products reliable?
· What is their distribution procedure, speed and delivery accuracy?
· How easy is it for me to place an order?
· What about shipping costs and discounts?
· How good is their customer support?
· Can they help me keep track of my ink and toner supply, so I don’t run out unexpectedly?
NO CONTRACTS AND WARRANTY MYTHS
In these economic times, you need the ability to take advantage of the best price out there, without sacrificing service, in order to increase your profits and/or simply reduce your expenses. Are you leasing your equipment where your ink and toner are “free” or “included” in the lease price? You know there’s really no free lunch. Before renewing your lease, do your research on how many cartridges and other printer parts the leasing company has supplied and determine what you might have paid if they were not included. You may find that negotiating a lease without the “free” ink and toner cartridges may actually save you money! And if the leasing vendor tells you that after-warranty parts being used in the leased printer will void the printer’s warranty, remind them about the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act enacted by Congress in 1975, which in effect prevents any manufacturer from voiding the warranty of any device simply based on the use of compatible or remanufactured parts or supplies, even if those parts are not the reason for the printer’s failure to perform properly. You can read more about this Act at InkMart.com.
By Joyce Calloway for InkMart.com, Copyright 2009
