How do I reduce my printing costs?

Printing can get expensive if you use your printer all the time, not just the cost of the ink cartridges, but also the paper too.

UK Ink Supplies have a few practical tips and some advice that you can use to help reduce your printing costs by cutting down on wasteful printing.

Print on both sides of a sheet of paper
If your printer has a feature called duplex printing, it means you can print on both sides of a sheet of paper during a print job. Of course if your print job is just one page or less then you won’t be able to use this feature.

Even if your printer doesn’t come with the double sided printing function, then there is no excuse! If you’re just printing for your own reference then make a tray for keeping one sided documents in (after you’re done with them of course) and each time you need to print something that’s just rough or for your own reference, take a sheet from your new A4 scrap paper tray and feed it into your printer.

Most printers are fitted with a single sheet feeder which is commonly used for feeding special paper and envelopes through the printer and you could use the single sheet feeder for putting through a single sheet of scrap paper, or you could load the main paper feeder. On smaller domestic inkjet printers there may be only one document feeder that serves all of these purposes.

Reduce your font size when printing text
Big text is great, it’s easy to read and makes your documents look great. But do you really need to print your draft documents in a large font? Dropping your font size by a few points will cut your ink costs considerably if used consistently. You can easily increase the font size for your final output.

If you find smaller text difficult to read and you need to print in a larger size for proof-reading your drafts, then consider proof-reading on the computer screen. Most modern wordprocessing software provides a zoom function to make it easy to scale your document up to make it easier to read on the screen.

Change your font
Fonts (sometimes known as typefaces) provide a great way to style documents, but fonts are not all equal. Fonts like Arial or Helvetica will use less ink than a serif font like Times Roman (serifs are the embelishments on the corners of the letters).

You can easily change the font when you print the final document.

Don’t be bold
In a similar vein to the preceding two tips, this one’s simple: do not use bold text, or underlines for that matter until you’re printing the final draft. Remember, the thicker and bigger the text, the more ink you are using! Simple!

If the idea of saving all of your document formatting until the document is finished sounds too daunting, when you’re ready to print just create a copy of your document and in that copy, change the font, the size, remove the formatting and the whole document is suddenly lighter and fewer pages in length. Happy printing!

Use print preview
The Print Preview mode allows you to preview your document before printing. Make it a habit to always check the Print Preview, look for unnecessary paragraph spacing (why use three blank lines when one will do), look for blank pages at the end of the document. All these little tweaks can add up, and could save you a sheet of paper – or more!

Print in draft mode
You’ll need to refer to your printer manual or the software that came with your printer for this one, but many printers provide a “draft mode” function for printing. When printing in draft mode, the printer uses less ink and so you won’t get crisp black text, but if the printout is just a rough draft then this could be a real money saver.

Narrow your margins
Margins are the white spaces at the top, bottom, left and right of your document. It is logical that the bigger your margins are, the less space there is for text and so more pages will be needed. Check the Page Setup settings in your word processor software.

You will need to play around with the margins to see what works with your printer – very few printers support borderless printing for documents, so you will need to have a minimum margin (often around 15mm or 1.5cm for left and right margins).

Think before printing
We’ve all seen that little green message at the bottom of emails – “Think before printing - please consider the environment before printing this email”.

How often do you print and then realise the document wasn’t required, or find that you’ve printed more than you wanted? Taking just a few seconds to consider what you’re printing, why you’re printing and checking that you aren’t printing anything you don’t need could have the biggest impact on your printing costs in a year – particularly if you regularly print order confirmations and receipts only to find you’ve also printed five pages of terms and conditions.

UK Ink Supplies of Lincolnshire - official Jet Tec retailer in Lincoln.
This blog is by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stocking a wide range of Jet Tec printer cartridges and Jet Tec laser toner cartridges for most printers.  For more information please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Jet Tec Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.

Tips for Solving Simple Printing Problems - UK Ink Supplies

One of the most frustrating things is preparing to print a document and when you click the print button nothing happens or you are get on-screen error messages. Here are some useful tips for troubleshooting your inkjet printer problem and in many cases fix your printer:

Many inkjet printers have built-in diagnostics programs to help you troubleshoot. Typically, running a test page involves pressing a button or two as you turn on the printer. Many inkjet printers also use a combination of indicator lights to help you identify the cause of the problem.

Turn your inkjet printer on and off if there seems to be a problem. This is just like rebooting a computer; quite often when you turn the printer on and off it resets itself and gets things working more efficiently.

Manually cancel a print job by selecting "Printers" from the Windows Control Panel and double-click your printer's icon. You should be able to see a list of the current print jobs. Right-click the job you want to cancel and then select "Cancel Printing".


Printouts are lighter than expected; prints contain white spots or horizontal lines. These are signs that point to a blocked or clogged print head - especially if you haven’t used your inkjet printer for some time. You can clean the head by running the head cleaning tool in the printer’s utility section.


Vertical lines are jagged. This is usually a sign that the print head is out of alignment. There’s not much you can do to avoid this problem - all print heads become misaligned over time. You can usually recalibrate the heads using the alignment tool that comes in your printer’s utility section. This involves printing a pattern of lines on normal paper and choosing which pattern looks best.


Colours are missing from the print; prints lack shadows and contrast. Colours may print inconsistently even before your printer tells you to replace an ink cartridge. If the ink cartridges are low on ink when the problem occurs, try replacing them; this may improve the colour print quality.


If there’s enough ink but your print seems to be missing a particular colour, you are likely to have a blocked or clogged nozzle, so you will need to clean your print head. Colour quality can also be reduced if an ink cartridge has been in your printer for more than six months. Try replacing with a new cartridge.


Keeping the inside of the printer clean is important. You can use tweezers and/or compressed air to clear out any dust build-up and paper snippets from inside your inkjet printer.


Regularly check for updates to your printer's driver. If you are experiencing problems you can visit your inkjet printer manufacturer's website and download the latest printer driver. Once you have re-installed your printer software you will need to reboot your computer and then try printing again.


These are some common causes of poor print quality after a new ink cartridge has been installed into your printer:

1. Allowing a printer to stand without an ink cartridge installed. To avoid this don't remove the empty ink cartridge until you are ready to install the replacement one.
2. Extended use of the printer without cleaning the inkjet printer heads. If the printer is used frequently, then it is recommended to regularly clean the heads.
3. Allowing the printer to stand for long periods of time without being used. Printers are similar to any other piece of machinery - if they are not used they "dry up" and need to be used on a regular basis to avoid this.

---

Article by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK stock a wide range of printer ink cartridges and laser toner printer cartridges.  For more information visit UK Ink Supplies for the latest digital media products.

UK Ink Supplies of Lincolnshire - official Jet Tec retailer in Lincoln.

This blog is by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stocking a wide range of Jet Tec printer cartridges and Jet Tec laser toner cartridges for most printers.  For more information please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Jet Tec Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.

Inkjet Printers and Laser Printers

In computing terms, a printer is a device (usually peripheral) that produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form, usually on print media such as paper, card or transparencies.

Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are permanently connected by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source. In most newer printers, a USB cable connects to a computer which serves as the document source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user connected to the network.

In addition, many modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, and scanners; some printers are integrated with a scanning and/or fax machine function - these printers are generally known as "multi-functional" or "all-in-one" printers.

Printers are designed for short-turnaround print jobs; requiring all-but no setup time to achieve a quality hard copy print of a required document.

The two main types of printers commonly found in the home and business are inkjet and laser toner printers.

A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text and graphics by employing a xerographic printing process by producing an image by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor. In contrast, an inkjet printer operates by propelling variably-sized droplets of liquid or molten material (ink) onto almost any sized page. They are the most common type of computer printer used by consumers.

In contrast, the printing press is designed and optimised for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs: printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a fraction of that of printers.

The printing press remains the machine of choice for high-volume, professional publishing. Although, as printers have improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops are now done by users on local printers.

However, as printer technology has improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops can now be readily done by users on local printers.


Blog by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stock a wide range of printer cartridges and laser toner  cartridges for most printers.  For more details please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.