Tips and Tricks to Lowering your Printer Costs Further...

Print Mode
There are three print quality levels, or 'modes' on most inkjet printers. They are 'Best', 'Normal', and 'Draft'. They are sometimes called different things with different brands, (for example Epson quotes resolutions for print modes) and in the print manager settings usually it describes the mode in terms of dpi or coverage. Curiously, most printers use almost the exact same amount of ink when printing in best and normal modes. So that won't save you much ink, but the machine will print faster (why couldn't it just print faster to begin with right?). The lowest mode, in this example 'draft' mode will actually save you a lot of ink. It is usefull when printing out web pages or reference material.

Printing Multiple Pages per Sheet
Most current 'on the market' inkjet printers have an option that enables the user to print from one to 16 pages per sheet of paper. For long reference or proofing documents, printing two or four pages to a sheet of paper is often a great way to edit and proofread without using a lot of paper. You can access these settings by clicking the Properties button on the Windows print dialog. Combine this technique with duplex printing to maximize savings when proofing documents.

Duplex Printing, the Paper Saver
You can access these settings by clicking the Properties button on the Windows Print dialog. It is a great way to save paper when printing web pages, drafts, emails, etc. Many printers will print duplex automatically if you select that option in your printer driver. However, if your printer does not support automatic duplex printing, you can still print duplex. In your Print dialog, first print the odd pages of your document. Once complete, feed these pages back into your printer and print the even pages.

Optimizing Your Page Layout
Your application's Print Preview function will allow you to determine how your document prints on the paper. If you find that you have a few lines of text on a page, you may be able to make small adjustments to your document layout, such as increasing your margins or removing blank lines, to pull that text back to the previous page.