Conserve Ink and $ave
If you have an ink jet printer, you know how quickly they can gobble up ink. You can scour the stores for the best price on ink cartridges, use refillable kits, or order cheap cartridges online. But the best way to save money on ink is the same way you save money on your water or electricity…..use less.
Here are a few tips for conserving on ink:
- Print only what you really need. If you click on the Print icon, the entire Web page or document will print. If you do not need all that information, use a slightly different procedure. First highlight what you want to print by dragging the mouse across the words or picture. Then go to the menu at the top of the screen and choose File. In the Print dialog box you will see an area for the Page Range. Click on Selection. Then click on Print. Only what you have highlighted will print. (If the word "Selection" is grayed out so you can't select it, it means you have not highlighted your selection. Go back and try again.)
- Print in Draft Mode. This prints everything lighter and significantly reduces ink consumption. Draft mode will give you poorer quality print. Since each printer is different you will have to experiment with this to see if the results are readable for you. There are several ways to access the draft mode, but the easiest is through the print dialog box that we used in Tip #1. Click on Menu, then Print. Choose Preferences. This dialog box will look different for each printer, but you will see a place to choose Draft Mode. This is usually under the Quality Options. If you don't see it immediately, look around. You may have to choose a different tab from the top of the box, or click on another choice to find it.
- Use Print Preview. Have you ever had the printer kind of go wild and print ten or twenty pages when you only intended to print one or two? You can prevent these potential disasters by using the Print Preview feature. Again, instead of clicking on that Print icon, choose File, Print, Print Preview. Print Preview will illustrate exactly what is going to print. The screen will show you the first page. Be sure to look at the top of the page where you will see how many pages will print and where you can scroll through to see each page. Often, especially with Web pages, you will only need to print the first page. If that is the case, you click on Print right from the Print Preview screen. This will bring up the handy Print dialog box where, under Print Range, you can choose to print only the pages you need. Click on the circle in front of Pages, and then fill in the pages you want to print. You can stipulate the first page only by entering a 1 in the box, you can choose to print a range of pages by entering 1-2 or 1-4, or you can print selected pages by separating them with a comma ie. 1,3,5 etc. This will also save money on paper.
- Print in black only. This is a great way to conserve color ink. You can find the option for this in the Print dialog box. It is generally under the Advanced option. If you decide to print in black only, be sure to use color occasionally to keep the color cartridges from drying up.
- If you print a lot, consider a laser printer. Consumable costs for laser printers are less expensive than those for ink jet printers.
