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

mikewebs

If I want to save ink, I just print in Draft mode. No need for risky downloads or ad-filled rubbish and I can also alter my printer settings to print in a better quality mode. Radical I know, but why reinvent the wheel when most printers let you do this anyway?

EnviroTech

For all those interested, GreenPrint (the Premium edition) will be available for 43% off today only (March 17):
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/greenprint-home-premium/
Save some trees, spread the word!

Jake'sGran

PasturesNew wrote: »

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.

What program is it that that alerts you to there being a trojan?

poppy10_2

EnviroTech wrote: »

For all those interested, GreenPrint (the Premium edition) will be available for 43% off today only (March 17):
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/greenprint-home-premium/
Save some trees, spread the word!

Spread the word for your malware-infested crud? No thanks.

I can't believe this thread hasn't been deleted yet.

DatabaseError

a good program for the lazy ones out there who can't be bothered changing print settings (myself included) is inksaver, it does cost $35 (free trial available), but allows you to print from 5% to 100% on the page, i used it on 35% ink saving for several years for everything and saved far more in ink than the program cost, though now i get ebay fakey cartridges so no longer bother (i also reset my cartridges when the computer thinks they've run out, and only throw them when they really have)

Gorf123

gb57 wrote: »

Gorf123 - where do you get your cartridges from - do tell! I have an Epson Stylus D68 - does this wonderful supplier of dead cheap cartidges sell suitable ones for that printer too?

Sorry it took so long to reply to this - I didn't even know I'd been asked to elaborate...

I'll go through the maths with the D68 at the bottom of my post.

The 13p I quoted was an equivalent price. Basically I have a continuous ink system set up in my Epson R300 - it's a ribbon of flexible pipes that lead from bottles outside the printer to dummy cartridges inside the printer. Whenever you power cycle the printer, the chips in the pseudo-cartridges reset.

The cost of the system at the time I wrote my post, plus the extra set of bottles it shipped with from SVP, made the equivalent price 13p a cartridge. That price has since come down just because the CISS is cheaper, but my particular install is now on its fourth refill - which makes it ridiculously cheap as I'm not paying for the CISS hardware any more, just bottles of ink.

That's slightly offset by the fact that I will now print at a whim, whereas before I would think carefully before using my precious ink.

A couple of caveats - it's messy, and the install is fraught with potential problems if you've never done it before. The manual is so bad, I had to take a photo of it and print it large on A4 before I could even read it.

Additionally:
Few people are aware that the printer will go through its own head cleaning cycles too. Whether manual or automatic, all the cleaned-out ink needs to go somewhere. It ends up as sludge in a sponge in the bottom of the printer. Eventually, the printer will decide the sponge needs changing - you'll get a "printer needs a service" error message. Again, this is done based on usage count not some clever "sludge detector". The count can be reset, but there's no avoiding the fact that the sludge will build up. There's usually an access panel in the back of the printer. Open it and you'll see the vent pipe and the sponge. Move the vent pipe outside the printer, and file a little hole in the panel so the pipe can be held in place when the panel goes back on. You can now vent the sludge into a margarine tub outside the printer and empty it when the need arises.

For anyone who absolutely must use "original" ink - it's actually cheaper to buy a reconditioned printer and use the ink that comes with that while discarding the hardware. Most people think bundled cartridges are half full. They aren't, it's just that a lot of ink is used to "prime" a new printer. If you use those cartridges in an already primed printer, you get the full quota, at half the price you'd pay in the Epson shop or at PC World. Dispose of the hardware responsibly, such as taking it to your electronic recycling centre.


Righty - the D68. It costs about a quid per (cheapo) cartridge. A current CISS from SVP will set you back £23.50 (there's a cheaper, clearance model at £18.99)

The current CISS comes with four 80ml ink bottles- not as good a deal as when I got mine, granted. Even so, it's the equivalent of 5½ complete refills - so you're getting £22 (5½ x 4 colours x £1) worth of ink for £23.50. It's on your next refill that you're getting the benefit: four 100ml bottles (equiv. 7 refills) for a total of £6, meaning that overall you're getting £50 of ink for an outlay of £29.50 - you're already saving 40% on the price of cheap ink. On your next refill you've had a total of £78-worth of ink for a total outlay of £35.50. And so on.

Plus, you're not screwing up the environment with all those empty cartridges...

paddytehpyro

I have greenprint and it is handy. I admit I dont print alot any way (maybe a few pages a month) but it does seem to cut down even more.

My version was on the coverdisc of Windows Vista: The Official Magazine. So it cant be harmful as I'm sure that they check these things. If not out of kindness then out of fear from solicitors.