Save ink, paper & money with a nifty free-to-download tool

Former_MSE_Lawrence

What's the deal?

There's a piece of free software that allows you to vastly reduce what you print; saving on ink cartridges, paper and time.

It does nothing you can't do yourself with a bit of effort; but its free, and you may find it reduces your effort.

It's called GreenPrint World, works on windows (sorry Mac users) and works by helping you print out only what you need, rather than just everything.

How does it work?

It works a bit like print preview in office documents, but allows you to quickly select pages you want to print and discard those you don't, as well as getting rid of unnecessary images and resizing text to fit better. Of course there are various ways to achieve the same result, and you don't necessarily need any extra software (e.g. you can just copy & paste text in to notepad), but it provides a very user-friendly way of solving the problem.

Best of all, the program sets itself up simply as another printer, so you needn't run it each time you want to use it, you just click 'print' as per usual and choose it, and it'll print through your usual printer.

How do I get it?

Go to the PrintGreener download page enter an(y) email address in the box on the left and click the 'Free! Download Now' button to start the download. The program will only run on Windows 2000, XP and Vista, and requires that you've at least a 1ghz processor and 256mb RAM.

Once downloaded, run the installation wizard and follow the on-screen instructions; it's very simple, and should take less than 5 minutes. Once installed, you'll notice that when you click 'print' on any document, you'll be able to choose the 'GreenPrint' printer icon from the print setup window, which, when selected, opens the program.

It's very intuitive to use, just right-click on each page and choose from the options 'remove page', 'remove images', or 'remove text'. You can also remove all images from the document at once by pressing ctrl+6.

While there's no bad feedback whatsoever, self evidentally MoneySavingExpert.com isn't responsible if you choose to download this software.

How come it's free?

This version of the program is subsidised by advertising, but thankfully it isn't particularly invasive. The company that makes it also has a paid-for version with more in-depth features (and no adverts), and it hopes that by offering this one for free it'll get people to upgrade. Luckily that remains no more than a suggestion; it doesn't keep nagging you to do so with irritating pop-up boxes like so many of its ilk.

Anything else?

In case you don't actually need that physical print-out, it's also adept at converting web pages (and basically whatever else you throw at it) into PDF documents. Save those on a keyring memory stick and you can still keep 'em with you, along with that light breezy feeling of eco-friendliness.

Update Note 30 Jan 10:25 am:

As some users below have reported, the tool's site is now flagged by Google as potentially harmful. This is due to a report request being submitted by somebody to the stopbadware.org site last night (for whatever reason), and it's likely to be rectified once it's investigated. The program has been listed and reviewed positively on many respected app download sites, hence its continued inclusion.

MSE Lawrence

Know alternative software that does the same? How did you find it? Let me know by clicking reply below

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ukmonkey

*waits for all the Mac users to whinge about how they're badly done to*

kingmonkey

and Linux users

poppy10_2

And people who don't like adware.

No privacy policy or contact info on their website=bad news. Avoid.

robt_2

How does it work?

It works a bit like print preview in office documents, but allows you to quickly select pages you want to print and discard those you don't, as well as getting rid of unnecessary images and resizing text to fit better.

Best of all, the program sets itself up simply as another printer, so you needn't run it each time you want to use it, you just click 'print' as per usual and choose it, and it'll print through your usual printer.

So basically it does NOTHING you can't do yourself, and without complicating things by installing another 'printer', and whatever adverts it wants to show you.

What a load of rubbish.

cd1951

Try using Fineprint, downloadable at www.fineprint.com or via one of the many free download sites.

Saves on ink & paper!!

The only advertising is at the bottom of the piece of paper which reads; "printed by software from www.fineprint.com".

Converts A4 to A5 (thus saving paper) also pdf facilities.

robt_2

cd1951 wrote: »

Try using Fineprint, downloadable at www.fineprint.com or via one of the many free download sites.

Saves on ink & paper!!

The only advertising is at the bottom of the piece of paper which reads; "printed by software from www.fineprint.com".

Converts A4 to A5 (thus saving paper) also pdf facilities.

Again, total rubbish.

The vast majority of printers can do that (A4 to A5) without any extra software.

robt_2

poppy10 wrote: »

And people who don't like adware.

No privacy policy or contact info on their website=bad news. Avoid.

I have in the back of my mind that this is illegal for a website that requests personal data (in this case yuor email address).

PasturesNew

I went to the recommended site ... and my PC instantly told me there was a trojan .... so I kept trying to choose delete and it kept arriving again. Had a hell of a time just getting the window closed again.

cama_2

Warning - visiting this web-site may harm your computer! - the page that you are about to visit may be a web forgery!



You can learn more about malware and how to protect yourself at StopBadware.org. This page is very likely to have been designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information. Entering any personal information on this page may result in identity theft or other fraud.

You can read more about phishing here antiphishing.org.

Or you can continue to http://www.printgreener.com/download.html at your own risk.

You can also turn off safe browsing warnings by going to Google Desktop preferences.


Advisory provided by

t8769

Well, the simplest way to save ink and paper is to always copy website info into Notebook first.

I'm amazed at the no of people who print directly from the internet, and the money they shell out for paper and ink cartridges, when they can print the same sutff from Notepad using 1/3.