How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 3

How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 3



How do I save money on ink and paper?

From the printer's driver-settings dialog box, you can specify draft mode to save on ink when you don't need the best quality. You can also save by turning off color printing--black ink and toner are usually cheaper than their color counterparts. To save on paper, print two pages side by side on the same sheet; and if your printer has a built-in duplexer, always print on both sides. Also, use cheap multipurpose paper for most jobs, such as printing Web pages and draft documents that only you will read. Keep your best paper for when you need the highest quality, such as for business letters and your résumé.

Whenever possible, buy ink and paper in bulk. Many manufacturers offer bundles of ink and paper that dramatically lower the cost of printing photos. HP's value pack for its Photosmart 375 and Photosmart 385, for example, combines one tricolor ink cartridge with 50 sheets of snapshot paper for $20--less than the $25 cost of the cartridge alone.

When buying toner for laser printers, look for high-yield cartridges. Many manufacturers produce cartridges in large capacities that let you print more for less. Dell, for example, offers cartridges rated for 3000 pages for its Laser Printer 1710n at $70, whereas a 6000-page cartridge costs $90 (with a discount for returning the spent toner cartridge).
Should I buy cheap generic ink or toner for my printer?

It's true that you can save significantly on printing costs by buying ink or toner made by a company other than your printer's manufacturer. And if you want just the cheapest possible printing for short-lived documents, that strategy is fine. However, you're taking a risk if print quality and longevity are important to you. For example, at the temperatures applied by your printer's engine, generic toner may not adhere to the paper as well as the manufacturer's compound. The result could be poorly shaped characters and gray banding across the page--not a great way to impress a potential customer.

When printing photos, you really need to use the ink and paper combination recommended by your printer manufacturer to ensure that your prints have accurate colors and won't fade quickly.
How do I recycle inkjet and laser toner cartridges?

Americans deposit millions of inkjet and laser toner cartridges in landfills every year. Manufacturing new cartridges consumes precious resources and energy. Many cartridges can be refilled several times, or they can be recycled in ways that are less harmful to the environment.

Laser printer manufacturers such as Dell and Lexmark sell toner cartridges at a discount if you return the cartridges for recycling when they're empty. Dell, for example, charges $90 per each 6000-page cartridge for its Laser Printer 1710n when you return an empty one; without a return cartridge it costs $130. In part, this pricing structure is meant to discourage customers from refilling the cartridges, but it can also help protect the environment.

Other manufacturers have programs for recycling their inkjet and toner cartridges. HP, for instance, includes postage-paid shipping materials with most of its printers, to make returning the used cartridges easier; you can also order these materials from the company's Web site. Brother and Oki offer similar programs through their sites. Konica Minolta includes prepaid shipping labels with its new cartridges for returning the used part.

Your local school or charity may participate in a cartridge-collection program that helps it raise money. You can also look for an office-supply store that pays you a small sum or offers a discount in exchange for spent refillable cartridges.

How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 2

How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 2



What type of printer should I buy for printing photos?

If you're printing only 4-by-6-inch photos, consider buying a snapshot printer that uses either dye-sublimation or inkjet printing technology. The devices take up little space, and they're often portable.

For printing larger photos, or if you also need to print text documents, you'll need a desktop inkjet printer. Models with four or more color ink cartridges generally produce the best quality. For high-resolution black-and-white photo printing, look for a model that prints several shades of gray and black.

Most photo printers have a PictBridge port that enables you to print directly from a digital camera without having to plug a memory card into either your PC or the printer. If you'll be printing most of your photos directly from your camera, you don't need an LCD on the printer itself--you can use the screen and controls on your camera to operate the printer instead. Many printers have media slots for printing from your camera's memory card, or for transferring the images to your PC. A good-size LCD on the printer is worth having if you intend to print directly from a memory card.

See PC World's Top Photo Printers and Top Snapshot Printers charts for our latest ratings.
Can I print high-quality photos on a color laser printer?

Color laser printers work well for printing documents that combine text, graphics, and photos. Most produce photos that are adequate for many purposes, such as real-estate brochures, car insurance claims, and missing-kitty fliers. Current models, however, lack sufficient color accuracy and print resolution to rival inkjet printers.

Many laser models, including the HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn, the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2500W, and the Lexmark C500n, let you print on glossy paper, which makes their images look more like real photos. A few lasers, such as the LaserJet 2605dtn and the Magicolor 2430DL, have either media slots or a PictBridge port for printing from a digital camera.
How do I print high-quality text on an inkjet printer?

To get the best text output from your inkjet printer, check the user manual to see what sort of paper the manufacturer recommends. Cheap multipurpose paper absorbs ink too easily, giving characters fuzzy edges.

Some inkjets, such as Epson's Stylus C88+ and Stylus Photo R800, use only pigment-based inks, which bleed less on more types of paper than do common dye-based inks. Other models, such as the Canon Pixma iP4300, the HP Deskjet D4160, and the Lexmark Z845, add a pigment black ink to their dye-based inks for printing darker and sharper black text.

How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 1

How to Spend Less on Printing and Get Better Results - 1


Once you've bought and set up a keyboard or a pair of PC speakers, you'll likely never have to tinker with them again (or spend more money on them). When they finally give out, you'll simply buy new models. Not so with your printer. The purchase price is only the beginning of your investment, and figuring out how to get the best prints--and how to spend less on ink or toner cartridges--can take a lot of fiddling and thought.

To help, we've assembled answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about printers, paper, and--most important--how to trim the ridiculously high cost of ink or toner.
Should I buy an inkjet or a laser printer?

To choose the right printer, think about the output quality you need, and how much you'll be printing. These two considerations will dictate how fast the printer must be and how much you should be prepared to spend on ink and paper.

If you print a lot of business documents, letters, and other text files, a monochrome laser printer is likely your best bet. These devices are fast and inexpensive, and produce good-looking documents for only pennies per page.

If you'll be printing documents containing color charts and other graphics, a color laser printer is a good choice. Recent price drops make color lasers affordable for nearly any small office. And these models often print black-and-white pages at a cost per page comparable to that of monochrome lasers. Plus their color-photo prints are good enough to use in newsletters, marketing brochures, and other plain-paper documents that mix text and pictures.

Anyone who prints more photos than documents will get top quality from an inkjet printer. If you print a mix of photos and documents, though, the choice is a bit more complicated. A typical home user who prints, say, driving directions, shots taken with a digital camera, product recommendations from a Web site, and a few business letters a month will find that an inkjet printer offers a good compromise between quality and speed. A workload such as this will require a variety of paper. If you purchase a model with two paper trays, you won't have to swap paper in and out of the tray as frequently.

PC World's Printer Info Center can help you find a printer that delivers the speed and quality you need, and that fits within your budget.
Should I buy a multifunction printer, or a separate printer and scanner?

It used to be said that a multifunction printer was jack-of-all-trades but a master of none. That's no longer the case.

You can get good-quality prints and scans from a multifunction unit. Additionally, both operations usually work better together in one machine than if you bought a printer and a scanner separately. You can copy a document directly from the scanner to the printer, for example, without having to route the image through your computer.

Multifunction printers come in two varieties:

    Office-oriented models have an automatic document feeder for scanning multiple pages as a single task, and often include a built-in fax machine.
    Photo-oriented models let you scan slides and negatives, and usually have built-in media slots for importing images directly from digital camera memory cards.

Multifunction printers designed for offices can use either inkjet or laser printer technology. While inkjets suit both home and small-office users, the laser units can replace a small workgroup's printer, copier, and fax machine.