How To Make Your Printer's Ink Cartridges Last Longer

The most efficient ways to maximize the printing potential of your printer's ink cartridges is to become familiar with the settings available to you before printing a document. The easiest and most cost effective method is to only print in colour when absolutely necessary. Colour cartridges usually yield less prints than black ink cartridges and are almost always more expensive too.

Another printer setting that will help to save ink is to use the 'printer friendly version' before printing. This will usually be a simplified version of the document without extra graphics such as logos and advertisements. By printing this simplified version of a document you will use less ink.

The final setting you can adopt to increase your ink cartridge life is to print in lower quality. The higher the quality of the print, so judge the importance of the print quality you require carefully. For instance, if you are printing an important document for a client with fancy graphs and images then you may feel a high quality print is justified. However, if you only need to print an invoice for filing then a low quality print would suffice and help to save ink.

There are also other ways you can ensure your inkjet cartridges last longer which are not reliant on your computer's printer settings. Firstly you can consider whether you do actually need to print a document at all. Many documents that get filed never see the light of day again so why not just save the file on your hard drive. You can then print it in future only if you really need to. If you need to print a document because it is intended for someone else ask the recipient if you could email it instead. Many large corporations are now choosing to email invoices and payment remittances to their clients instead of posting a printed copy. This saves on both the postage and the ink costs.

Finally, if you have decided that you absolutely must print a document then make sure that you will only have to print it once. how many times have you printed a document only to realise it is riddled with spelling mistakes? By properly proofreading before you press the print button you could cut ink cartridge costs by as much as half. By following the steps above you will not only reduce your ink cartridge costs but also help save the environment by slowing down the rate at which cartridges end up in landfill.