TOP FIVE: Money Saving Tips for Printing
It's a new year with new resolutions, and it's always time to save some money too! Printing can get expensive and it's mostly a necessity in our lives now. So, how can you keep printing as needed and yet be frugal while doing so? We've compiled our top five tips for saving money on printing this year.
1. Switch to draft or lower quality when printing
This can be configured in your settings and will save ink or toner when printing. Draft quality should suffice for much of the printing people typically need to do. However, we recommend that high quality printing should still be done on the 'best' or 'high quality' setting.
2. Choose a lower grade of paper and use recycled paper
Paper costs can be reduced by using paper with a lower brightness or grade. Print double sided whenever possible and also print any draft work or print tests on paper from your recycle bin. This won't make a huge different if you don't print that much, but in the long run you'll save money and it's better for the environment too!
3. Preview and select only what you need to print
Have you ever tried to print something off the web, only to have pages and pages print rather than the small thing you actually needed? Deleting parts of documents you don't need to print after copying and pasting it into a word processing document can help make sure that doesn't happen. As well, capabilities are improving to print a selection or to click and print only the thing you really need. This applies to other non-web printing too. Only print the pages or sections you need to save some paper & ink.
4. Minimize density settings when printing
You can change the density of ink or toner your printer will use when printing - meaning things will print more faded and less vibrant than normal. If perfect colours and full density/vibrancy of printed material isn't needed for what you print, consider changing your printer's density settings from 100% to 80% or even 70%. You'll be saving ink or toner when printing without even thinking twice about it!
5. Purchase a new economical printer
Although this tip won't save you money right away, it may very well save you a lot in the future. Every day we tell at least one of our customers to think about buying a new printer instead of investing in expensive printer cartridges that may not be meeting their needs, or may be for an older printer (most printers are only made to last 3-5 yrs). Choosing a new printer that has a very low cost to run, like a black only small laser printer or an economical colour inkjet with refillable cartridges and duplex printing capabilities, may save you some right off the bat and will surely save you big bucks in the long run. We give our customers new printer recommendations all the time, so feel free to get in touch with us if you're looking into this option!