10 Tips On How To Make Printer Ink Last Longer
1. Print in Draft Quality as much as possible
In your printer options you can choose to print in “draft quality”. Unless you’re printing up that award winning photo, you’ll want to leave your printer on draft quality most of the time.
2. When printing black and white, use the black and white setting!
Similar to the above tip, when printing something that is only black and white (such as text-only) you will want to go into your printer settings and change the quality to “black and white”. This makes sure that your printer is only using the black ink cartridge.
3. Some Fonts that can save you ink
There is a great font called “Ecofont”. This font has small little holes in each character that allows you to save 20% of your ink, without loosing readability. Other fonts that help you save ink are Garamond, Courier and Brush Script, just try not to use bold.
4. Only print what you need
We’ve all experienced it, you print something off a web page, and the whole web page prints out! There is a great service called “Print What You Like”, which allows you to print only certain parts of a web page. As an alternative, and maybe for the more tech savvy, you can also highlight the text you want, paste it into a program like Microsoft Word or Notepad, and print from there.
5. Cartridges will go bad if left unused
Print at least one item a week. Cartridges will die if not used regularly. Recently I left my printer in storage for awhile and couldn’t figure out why the prints came out the way they did. Turns out, lack of use made the ink go bad.
6. Refill your own Cartridges
You can buy Ink Cartridge refill kits for about half the price of an Ink Cartridge. This tip is really only for the hardcore DIY’er. You need to follow the instructions that come with your kit VERY carefully. Here is a great link to get you started.
7. Buy Re Manufactured Cartridges
A lot of companies will do the work of having to refill your cartridge for you. They will take a name brand cartridge and refill it on a professional level, so if you’re a little hesitant about the DIY aspect, and don’t spending a little extra money, this is a good alternative to the tip above.
8. Check your Printer’s Drum
When your printer is not producing the results you expect, sometimes you can get away with replacing the drum in your printer. This costs a lot less than having to refill an entire cartridge.
9. Buy Ink Cartridges online
You can find much better deals online. Just make sure you’re buying the right kind of cartridge for your printer. You can even find some trusth worthy generic cartridges out there, just make sure you read the reviews. Also, if you buy in bulk, you may save money with free shipping.
10. Properly shut down your Printer
You wouldn’t just slam the power button on your computer to shut it off, the same goes for your printer. If you power it down the wrong way, your heads could be in the wrong position, and this can cause the ink to dry out faster.