ink cartridges
It is a known fact that you’ll spend more money on printer ink cartridges than you have on that new printer. Original ink cartridges are costly and expensive, and you can burn a hole in your pocket if you print a large amount of documents and images everyday.
There are, however, steps you can do to make the most out of your printer ink cartridges. Save money, minimize waste and give Mother Earth a helping hand with these green, economical tips on how to make the most out of your printer ink cartridges.
1. Analyze your document. If you need to print information like printer or computer specs or recipes for your personal use, then use fonts that are less ink-hungry. Smaller sized, regular fonts are more economical than bold-faced, larger fonts. In addition, if all you need printed from a web page is text, remove all images before printing to save on printer ink. Go over the document and try to remove unnecessary spacing to save on paper and ink as well. Changing font sizes and spacing can often fit a five-page document into just three pages.
2. Always print on draft mode. Unless you’re printing a final presentation, set your printer to “draft” mode as its default. There’s no excuse for wasting expensive printer ink on test pages you plan on revising anyway. A good partner to this rule is to always edit first before printing.
3. Print something every week. This may sound like you’re wasting precious printer ink, but printing regularly keeps your printer well-maintained. Printer cartridges easily dry out when they’re not used constantly, and become unusable when dry as a result. Print a test page every week. This doesn’t use up a lot of ink and you keep your ink cartridges in tiptop shape.
4. Save electricity, save your printer. Always turn off your printer when not in use. This doesn’t only help you save energy; it also keeps your printer ink from heating up too much and clogging your printer head.
5. Don’t shy away from generic ink cartridges. Most people are scared of buying generic ink because they hear horror stories about damaged printers and bad printing, but facts show that not only are generic ink cartridges less expensive than original manufacturers’ printer ink, the print outs they produce are of good quality, too.
6. Run a cleaning cycle regularly. After some time, print outs tend to have white streaks or wavy lines on them, and most of us are quick to replace cartridges thinking that our printer has run out of ink. Before you do that, run a cleaning cycle on your printer–you may do this by going to your printer’s menu and clicking on “clean printer heads” or “clean printer cartridges.” Chances are, those streaks are caused by dirty printer heads, and not lack of ink.
Printer ink may be costly and expensive, but this shouldn’t stop you from making good use of your printer. Just follow the simple rules outlined above and choose more affordable, quality third-party ink cartridges to enjoy all your printer’s features without having to worry about spending too much on ink.