10 Ways To Get More Prints For Less Money From Your Printer

The total cost of a printer is determined not only by the cost of the printer, but also by the cost of the cartridge, pages per cartridge, printed pages per year, and more. To reduce the cost of your prints, and therefore, the cost of your printer, take note of these 10 tips on saving money.

Use A Laser Printer: Starting at the point of purchase, if you want to print a lot of pages for a low cost per page, then you should get a laser printer. Laser printers may cost more upfront, but they will save you a lot of money in the long run. Toner cartridges have a higher page yield than inkjet printers’ ink cartridges. Printing 1,000 pages on an inkjet printer will cost five times more than on a laser printer. The brother tn 350 toner cartridge can print 2,500 pages at a 5% coverage for less than $50 and the brother tn-460 toner, a high yield toner cartridge, can print 6,000 pages at 5% coverage for around $60. It may sound a bit expensive, but each sheet will only cost a few cents per page to print.

Print Only Text: Don’t print images if you don’t need to. Let’s say you want to print information from a web page but do not need the images. For this scenario it’s best to copy the text and paste it on a text editor such as Notepad. There, you can print out the information and save loads of color toner.

Use The Print Preview: How many times have you printed a document only to find part of it was cut off, it wasn’t formatted correctly, or you printed one final page with only a few sentences of garbage you didn’t need to print. When printing, try to always use the print preview before printing so you don’t waste toner or paper.

Send Documents Electronically: A good way to save on paper from the get-go is to not print at all. If possible, send co-workers documents in emails, transfer them via USB flash drive, or copy them on a shared network.

Scan Documents For Filing: Instead of printing out documents to collect dust in folders in rows of file cabinets, start scanning documents to save on a company server, or onto your own computer. Sheetfed scanners with OCR software are great for this. Additionally, having an electronic version of your documents makes it easier to share.

Ignore The "Low-Toner" Light: Studies show that often times up to forty percent of a toner cartridge’s toner is still left in the cartridge when the “out of toner” or “low-toner” light comes on. Ignore the light and run it for several more jobs until the quality starts to diminish. Be careful not to completely dry out the toner though.

Don't Let The Toner Cartridge Dry Out: Toner cartridges will dry out if you run the printer too long before changing the cartridge and from not using it often. To keep the cartridge fresh, make sure you print a page once a week and change the toner cartridge when the print quality starts to fade.

Shake The Toner Cartridges: While it sounds a bit unusual, shaking a toner cartridge when it gets low will actually activate the remaining toner and allow several more passes to print. Give them a good shake if you are really trying to lower your budget.

Shut Printers Off Properly: Most people don’t think about this, but how you shut off your printer can damage the unit. By hitting the power button, the printer parks the printer heads in their proper resting place for the next use. If you shut the printer off from the power strip and not the printer itself, it can bypass its normal shut-down process, which can lead to a clogged or dry printhead. Remember to never shut your printer off from the power strip.

Know When To Buy Off-Brand and When NOT To: Generic printer cartridges and refill kits are a few dollars cheaper than brand-name cartridges but are only good if you don’t care about print quality, you don’t print images, you don’t print a lot, and you don’t have a printer you are really care about. No-name cartridges’ low quality prints often fade quickly and are inconsistent. They also aren’t as good of a value as you would think since they produce fewer prints per cartridge; this is because they aren’t as full as brand-name toner cartridges. The best bet is to watch what you print and choose the brand-name toner that was meant for your printer. Trusted brands of toner are HP toner, Brother toner, Epson toner, Canon toner, Xerox toner, Samsung toner, and Lexmark toner.

Follow these ten tips and save money on toner, paper, and save by extending the life of your printer.

By: erinwong

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