Sarasota PC Monitor
Practicing the Black Art (07/03)
Is Your Printer A Spendthrift?
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Your printer may have been designed to conform to the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star standards, but it could still be draining your bank account. Read through your computer manual carefully and you won't find any tips on how to save money. You won't find all the answers in this article, but we'll give you a good starting place on how to use your printer efficiently and not wastefully. Unless otherwise indicated, all tips and suggestions are meant for ink jet printers.
Use Your Printer Regularly
Most print problems occur because ink dries up in the print head or nozzles. Clogged nozzles will give you white lines streaking through the print, poor print quality, and in extreme cases, no print at all. Print something at least once a week in both black text and color. Anything that stands idle tends to deteriorate. Your printer is no exception.
Keep Print Heads Clean
Deposits of ink will sometimes accumulate on the print head, especially with Hewlett Packard printers. You can easily remedy this condition by gently cleaning the print head with a soft cotton cloth or Q-tip dipped in water. Be sure to re-seat the cartridge properly after cleaning.
Purge Your Ink Cartridges
Purging the cartridge regularly is important in ensuring a long cartridge life. The purging cycle is NOT the same as the cleaning cycle. The purge cycle consists of a process that heats all the jets in the cartridge and then cleans them from the inside out. If you don't know how to do this, read your printer manual.
You don't have to be concerned about print heads if you have a laser printer. Toner, however, because it is so fine, tends to accumulate along the paper path. Clean the paper path with a vacuum cleaner and damp cloth about four times a year. Don't use a blower. These devices spread the toner throughout the machinery and eventually cause equipment failure.
Adjust Your Printer Settings
Check your settings and you will probably find that your printer is set to the highest quality available. You will get great looking copy, but you will also be consuming the most ink or toner. Manufacturers want you to be pleased with their products and they also want to make money on replacement cartridges. Change the default to Draft, Fast Draft, Everyday or whatever your lowest-quality setting is called. In most cases, this will be just fine. This also applies to your color options. Color cartridges cost more than black ink cartridges, so why print in color if you don't need it?
Put More on a Page
You may need a full-featured word processor for help in this area. WordPerfect has a "Make It Fit" option that allows you to shrink or expand a document to fit in a specified number of pages without straining your eyeballs. It also features a "Thumbnail" option in the Print dialog box that allows printing multiple pages on one sheet. Microsoft Word has a similar function in its Print dialog box. Printing reference copies of documents is a great way to save paper.
Reuse Your Ink Cartridges
You probably already know that refilling ink cartridges can be a good way to save money. An ink cartridge may be used several times, but don't let it run dry. Many cartridges contain sponges, but if the sponge dries out your only option is to discard the ink cartridge and buy a new one. Don't try to rescue the cartridge if the sponge dries out. There is too great a chance that your print head will be destroyed. If your print cartridge has a chip that prevents refills, call a local dealer. If there is a way to reset the chip, they will know about it.
One Printer per Home Network
Unless you require specialized high quality layouts for graphics design, you should only need one printer for your home network. This is easy to do if you have Windows XP on your main computer. Click Start, Control Panel, and Printers and Faxes. Right-click your printer icon and select Sharing from the popup menu. On the Sharing tab, click Share This Printer. If all your computers are running XP, that's all you need to do. Any computer on the network running XP will find the printer automatically. If you insist on running your network with a mixture of operating systems, good luck.
Before You Buy
Check how easy or difficult it is to remove a jammed piece of paper, and to replace ink or toner cartridges. If you use special paper or forms, bring samples into the store and try them out on the printer. Most stores will let you do this. Have the sales representative demonstrate all controls and indicators before you purchase. If you have a small work area, measure the printer when the paper trays are completely extended.
Keep Your Printer Drivers Current Just do it! Enough said. :
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Copyright 2003. This article is from the July 2003 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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