Save Money on Ink: Print in Draft

The cost of buying a new printer has dropped enormously over the past ten or fifteen years and the companies that manufacture them have realised that they have a better product. Ink!

I paid less than $100 for my Epson printer but a full set of ink cartridges costs $108. That's where the profits lie. Until last month I was able to buy generic ink for a fraction of the price but Epson have found a way to stop me doing that. (I've already written about it HERE so there's no need to do it again.) Saving your old cartridges and having them refilled is still an option worth considering. They haven't found a way to stop us doing that yet.

By the way, in case you thought it might be cheaper to buy a new computer every time you want to replace your ink, forget it. The cartridges that come installed with new printers contain much less ink.

The key to saving money with your printer is to print in draft. This gives a much fainter print on the page, but it is still easily legible. It uses much less ink and your cartridges will last much longer. (In my own case, I need to print about 20 copies of three or four pages each week for my creative writing class, and the cost of doing that in standard print would be prohibitive.)

Here's how it's done in Microsoft Word.

1. Click the Tools menu (in Word, of course)
2. Select Options
3. Click on the Print tab
4. Under Printing options select Draft output
5. Click OK

There you go—it's dead easy.

Not everybody uses Microsoft Word. In my own Open Office suite it's a little different:

1. Click the File menu (in Write)
2. Select Printer Settings
3. Select Options
4. Click on Draft
5. Click OK

So if you're not using MS Word you'll find that it's still easy to do. In most software you'll find it under Tools/Options, or File/Print, or a close variation of those.