Helpdesk
Q: Everyone is telling me I should replace my desktop computer. I purchased it in 2005. Should I replace with a desktop or laptop? I use it for paying bills, address book, e-mail, writing checks and very little else. — Ralph Hirsch
A: Sounds like this will be your only computer. If that’s the case, then perhaps a laptop would suit you just fine. That way you’ll be able to take your computer along when you travel and still have a computer to use when at home. And I think your friends are right when they say it’s time to replace your aging computer. Even the least expensive new computer will run rings around your old one.
When I was a young technology reporter I wrote an article explaining how paper would virtually vanish before long. We’d do just fine replacing paper with digital files, I explained with the wisdom that only comes to the young.
Well, if you look around at work, at home and in school you’ll still find a lot of paper. Sure – just as I predicted – many of you now read your newspaper online and, yes indeed, email has really diminished the use of the old fashioned letter written on paper.
But in most homes a printer still sits beside the computer. The good is that decent printers are dirt cheap these days. The bad is that printer ink cartridges are expensive. Most of us spend more on ink in a year than we did on the purchase price of the printer.
There are ways to both cut your printing expenses and to prolong the life of your printer. We’ll talk about both today.
Print preview
If you only follow one of my tips, follow this one. Most of us – me included – end up printing out a document and then, when proofreading it, find things we want to change.
Almost every word processing program has a preview mode. When you select that you can see how the document will look when printed. Use it to do your proofreading and also check to see how the margins look and whether you need to lengthen or shorten what you wrote. If you do that, you’ll end up printing just once. Over a year that will save a lot of paper and ink.
Your printer lies
Sooner or later, you’ll run out of ink and your printer will tell you about it. Most time there’s quite a bit more life in that ink cartridge. Just remove it and tilt it back and forth a bit. That spreads the ink out and – at least in my experience – will often produce many more pages before it needs to be replaced.
Here it is in black and white
Plain black and white documents don’t need color. But your printer often will disagree and, despite the fact that there’s no color on the page, use some of your colored ink. If your printer offers a black and white only option it’s smart to use it when creating this type of document.
Ink jets are expensive devils
Like I said earlier, ink jet cartridges are expensive. If most of your printing involves black and white documents an inexpensive laser printer will be much more economical. Toner cartridges seem to last forever. There are also inexpensive lasers that do both color and black and white. But the ink jet does a fine job with color and remains my first choice when printing photos or producing colorful pages.
Turn off the printer
Something really helpful happens when you turn off an ink jet printer. It’s called parking the head. The head is the printhead – the part of the printer than distributes the ink on the page. When that head is parked, the printer shields it so the tiny ink nozzles don’t dry out. That’s a fine thing. At the best, a clogged printhead will require cleaning. Your printer does that by pushing ink through it – wasting even more ink. At the worst, the printhead becomes so clogged that it needs replacing. And since most printers are priced so cheaply, it’s usually less expensive to buy a new printer than to order and install a new printhead.
Refillable cartridges
I don’t have a recommendation here. I stick with the cartridges sold by the manufacturer of my printer. I know many smart – and thrifty – people who buy cartridges that are refilled by a commercial company or that can be refilled at home. Some people have trouble with these cartridges, some don’t. I stay away from them, but maybe I’m being overly cautious.
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