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07 Oct 10 - 10:13 AM (#3001683) Subject: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: GUEST,leeneia I like to make a printer cartridge last as long as possible, so I was pleased when a reliable source gave me some tips. 1. Consumer Reports Money Adviser had its engineers print pages in six fonts, all 12 point. Times New Roman was the best. It printed 419 pages, while Calibri (which looks just as big) printed only 395. They tried six fonts total, and Times New Roman was the clear winner. 2. There is free software available so that when you print a web page, you can print only the parts you want. You can avoid those pages that contain only a footer, for example. HP Smart Web print (www.hp.com) Canon Easy web print (www.canoneasywebprint.com/en/index.htm) Green Print (www.printgreener.com) It is claimed that all three work with any printer. I have an HP printer, so I chose the HP product. It has not been real easy to download, but I believe I'm there. |
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07 Oct 10 - 10:37 AM (#3001694) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: Tootler Interesting results. I used to use Times New Roman as my default but have changed to using a sans serif font as I read a lot more on the screen and sans serif fonts are easier to read on a screen. I personally find Calibri a particularly ugly font. The software you mention is only any good if you are a) Using Windows b) Using Internet Explorer As I use neither, it is useless to me. There are ways you can reduce the amount of printing from the web without resorting to fancy software and it does not depend on have a particular operating system or browser. Use print preview to check the way the pages will look and only print those pages you need. If you find from print preview that there is a great deal of extraneous material which is not needed in the printout, then copy and paste the material you do need into a word processor and print from there. If it is an image you need, right click on the image and select "View Image" from the menu. This will display the image in a new browser page and you can print it from there. Even if you are on Windows and use IE, you can still use these techniques. No need to clutter your computer with unnecessary software. Knowing Windows tendency to develop "arthritis", avoiding unnecessary software can only be a good thing. |
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07 Oct 10 - 11:33 AM (#3001734) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: GUEST,PeterC For monochrome printing a laser printer is more economical than an inkjet. The higher cost per cartridge is more than offset by the far longer life. When a laser cartridge appears to be reaching the end of its life, take it out, rock gently from side to side and replace. This will redistribute the toner and get your immediate printing done before buying a replacement. |
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07 Oct 10 - 01:35 PM (#3001841) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: JohnInKansas For monochrome printing a laser printer is more economical than an inkjet. This is generally true for the more popular printers, but if you "move up" to some of the newer business class printers - and use the extended capacity ink cartridges that are available for some of them - the actual cost per page is too close to make a significant enough difference between ink jet and laser to support a generalization of this kind. It is true, for now, that most ink jet printers that compete on a pennies per page basis with laser printers are closer to $300+ (US) than to "free but we'll get you on the ink." It's also true that some of the newer lasers (including the color kind) use their toner(s) much more efficiently than older ones, so the competition on both sides of the fence is pretty active. The cost per page tradeoff between monochrome printing on inkjet vs laser is very close to zero for the "bigger" machines. Color laser printers now available are close to inkjets on cost per page, and are much closer in color quality than before; but there are few choices where you get (almost) "just as good" for both color and cost in the same laser machine. It does remain difficult to get accurate cost/page information before purchase from most sellers. The best savings come from printing less and saving more. Copying to your wp program and deleting the extraneous stuff before printing can save a lot of ink (and paper); but printing to pdf and not printing, where possible, will save a lot more with less effort. Recent Windows versions should all have the "print to pdf" drivers, and all you have to do is install them. Older (or other) systems should be able to find a "print to pdf" driver compatible with most printers you might have set up. In either case, you may find that a full-featured "pdf converter" program may be handy if you use the save-and-not-print method much; but that's sort of a different subject. John |
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07 Oct 10 - 04:17 PM (#3001988) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: GUEST,leeneia The free software from HP and Canon works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. Sorry, I failed to mention that you need Windows. |
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07 Oct 10 - 04:46 PM (#3002013) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: Tootler That wasn't obvious from the website and the HP website explicitly said IE. That said, even if the software does work with Firefox, being a Linux user, it's still no use to me. A lot of useful info from JiK and I agree with his philosophy of save rather than print if you can avoid it. With computers now coming with LCD rather than CRT screens, reading on screen is much less tiring than it used to be. I used to tutor part time for the UK Open University and towards the end of my time, they developed an online submission system and it meant I could do all the marking without ever printing anything out. OTOH, most of my music notation is printed out, though I do occasionally read the music off the screen when I want to check something quickly. |
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08 Oct 10 - 10:40 AM (#3002486) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: GUEST,leeneia Now, for us ordinary mortals - Suppose you want visit a National Wildlife Regufe. The refuge website has contact info on page 1, a map on page 3, and a list of trails on page 6. (You have no interest in the info inbetween.) With the free software, if you have a common type of operating system, you can pick those elements from those different pages and print them all on one sheet of paper with no irrelevant on blank pages. It's a nice thing to have. |
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08 Oct 10 - 02:10 PM (#3002684) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: Q (Frank Staplin) Thanks, leeneia. Tips are always useful, even when they don't fit in either your system or interest field- they make one think of alternative possibilities. Like guest Peter C, I shake the laser cartridge (cheap HP laser printer), and treat it roughly on 2nd and 3rd shakes for a "little more print" before finally consigning it to recycle. I have an 8-ink Canon when I wish to get very good reproduction from my images (nearly all mine, not from internet or email). The inks are expensive, so I never use it for routine copying. Color pictures on internet that I copy "just to have a record" are made on the BW laser. My principal sources of waste printing are articles that I want to read at leisure. These are mostly discarded after I have done that. I hate reading for detail off the net- the material in hand and my rear in a comfortable easy chair is 'far' preferable. |
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09 Oct 10 - 12:53 AM (#3003031) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: JohnInKansas For things off the internet that you just want to save for later reading (or citation at mudcat) there are a couple of fairly decent options that don't waste paper or ink. In IE (and probably in other browsers) the "Page" button on the toolbar lets you "save as." If you save as html, any inserts will be in a folder separate from the page file, so moving either, or renaming anything after the save, will break all the links. Another choice is Save As "Web Archive Single Page" (.mht). This puts everything into a single file, including all the linked-in pictures (that get captured). The file should open in your default browser when you're ready to use it later. A "fault" with either of the above two methods is that neither clearly records the URL for the page, so you can't easily use the saved file to make a "clickie" when you cite the page for someone else to look at. In most browsers, you can set up your print preferences to print the URL in the footer on each page. If you then print the web page using the "print to PDF" or other print-to-file setting, your default footer, with the URL should appear on each page of the "print." This works for most pages, but very long URLs will be truncated, so you need to check to make sure you've captured the whole thing if you're relying on it to be able to go back to the page. Especially for Google (or other search engine) results, you'll probably want to "remove frame" to get a direct link to the page and get rid of all the search/link foo-fah. A last resort is to copy what you want to Word (or wp of your choice) and paste the URL (and ideally the date of publication) separately into the document, and just save the .doc (or .docx). This was a preferred method just a few months ago, but the proliferation of linked-in ads and "animated" clicky/blinkies, and excessive use of frames for everything - making it hard even to "highlight" what you want to copy - makes it less useful for sites that have "followed market trends." John |
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09 Oct 10 - 02:53 PM (#3003337) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: GUEST,leeneia Yes, giving the cartridge a shake and putting it back in is a good idea. I just did that a week ago, and it's still printing. I agree with you Q, that reading from a computer is not much fun, and that reading a book (or similar) is far more pleasant. There are many posts on the Mudcat that I don't read because they are too long. (I also refuse to read more than two sentences in italics.) |
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09 Oct 10 - 05:27 PM (#3003430) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: Q (Frank Staplin) I save material, but when I get the time and wish to read it, I print a copy. When books that are interesting are put on the net, I go to book dealers and buy a copy if it is not too expensive. I won't read more than a few pages on a monitor. |
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09 Oct 10 - 07:00 PM (#3003478) Subject: RE: Tech: useful printing info from Consumer Rpts From: Artful Codger Ebook readers are another option for printless, convenient reading, as they can handle most stuff saved as HTML. I used to love my RocketBook (before it was obsolesced)--I could even read it as I was walking my dog at night or at movies or concerts while waiting for the show to get under way. But today's devices are too spendy and doubtless are designed to fritz the day after the 1-year warranty expires. I've had two inkjet printers, and both fritzed in short order (plus soaking me on the ink cartidges), so I'm going back to a laser printer--the one I had lasted eight years before it malfunctioned. It's so rare that I need to (or even want to) print in color, I can freeload on someone else's system for that. |