Three Ways To Maximize The Use Of Printer Ink Cartridges

2011-02-15

Anyone who uses printers frequently understands how printer ink can quietly leech money away from a home or business. With ink cartridges averaging about $30 apiece, it becomes important to find ways of maximizing printer ink use out of each cartridge. A few simple tricks can extend the life of even the cheapest of cartridges by several pages.

One of the easiest ways to get more use out of a low ink cartridge is to remove the cartridge from the printer and shake it for a few seconds before replacing it. Printer ink can dry partially whenever it is not in use. As a result, ink can stick to the inside walls of a printer cartridge. Shaking the cartridge allows this ink to settle at the dispensing end of the cartridge where it can be used by the printer. This one procedure will by itself add pages of output to each cartridge of ink used.

In maximizing printer ink use, it is also necessary to evaluate how high-quality a given print must be. Most people do not consider printer settings, instead using the default settings for a given printer. The default print settings, however, are not the most efficient, and a printer is actually capable of using much less printer ink per print than what the default settings use. So how does one change these settings? It is actually not difficult, requiring only a few extra mouse clicks when printing. First, when printing a document, select print out of the File menu instead of the print icon in the toolbar. Next, click on the "Properties" button in the window that opens, which should pop up another window. This window will have a drop-down menu called "Print Quality." Changing the print quality to "Draft" or "Fast Draft" uses less ink while still being easily read, and is great for maximizing printer ink use.

A third way to get the most mileage out of a printer ink cartridge is to only have color ink loaded in a color printer when one is not printing black and white documents. The reason for this is a feature on color printers which will combine all three colors in a color ink cartridge to create black when the black printer ink is running low. When this "emergency black" is used, it drains color ink extremely quickly, wasting ink and therefore money.

There are many other ways to save money by maximizing printer ink use, but these are perhaps some of the most effective. By using these methods to use printer ink efficiently, one can extend the life of their printer ink by many pages per cartridge, and save a significant amount of money in doing so.