10 top tips to get the most out of your ink cartridgesWould you like to get the most out of your printer ink cartridges and make them last that little bit longer?

Whether you like to do lots of printing or you just like to be super-thrifty, I’m going to share with you my top 10 tips to make your ink cartridges last as long as possible and you too can be a printing genius!

So let’s start with a few basics:
 

What’s the difference between ink and toner cartridges and how do they work?
  • Well firstly, ink cartridges contain liquid ink and toner cartridges contain coloured powder (toner).
  • In an inkjet printer, an ink cartridge sprays thousands of tiny ink droplets as thin as a human hair onto the paper through hundreds of nozzles.
  • A laser printer uses a static charge to attract dry powder (toner) to the paper and then uses heat to ‘fuse’ the toner to the paper.
  • Generally, inkjet printers are designed for home use and for small print jobs, where Laser printers are designed for printing lots at once and very often, so toner cartridges will print lots more!

Now you know the difference between ink and toner cartridges, here are my Top Tips to get the most out of your printer ink cartridges and save a little money!

My 10 top tips:

1)      Firstly, buy the right printer that will work best for you and what you need to print.

E.g. If you print 100’s of pages every week, maybe a laser printer would be best for you, as it would be more economical in the long run, but if you only need to print now and again, a good quality inkjet printer would be ideal.

2)      Don’t always go for the cheapest printer!

Printer manufacturers actually make most of their money when we buy the ink cartridges rather than a printer, so sometimes printers can be very cheap to encourage you to buy it, but the ink cartridges might be expensive. Checking how much ink costs before you buy a printer could save you lots of money and you might get a better printer…Win, Win!

3)      Look for a printer with an energy efficient rating.

Save money on electricity by purchasing a printer with an energy efficient rating and also switch off your printer when you aren’t using it!

4)      Don’t leave your printer unused for long periods of time.

Sometimes leaving your printer unused can cause ink to dry up or nozzles to clog, just by printing one small document a week can prevent that and keep your cartridges in tip top condition!

5)      Buy compatible or remanufactured cartridges.

Remanufactured and compatible cartridges (cartridges that aren’t made by the printer manufacturer) are getting better and better all the time and can be much cheaper to buy! However, it is ridiculous to claim that these cartridges are better than the OEM (Original equipment manufacturer) cartridges, even though some less honest company’s do, so if you need your print out to be tip top quality, it’s always best to stick to the OEM cartridges.

6)      Buy cartridges in bulk.

When you need to buy your new cartridges, buy bundles or multi-packs. Most companies sell larger packs of inkjet cartridges at a discounted price to encourage you to buy more. Buying them will save lots of money over time!

7)      Print in draft, preview first, and print only when needed!

As simple as it sounds, only print when you absolutely need to; you can always preview and see how your print out will look on-screen before wasting any ink and paper. Also if you don’t need fantastic quality print outs, you can select draft mode or print in low quality and save your ink!

8)      Change that fancy font type!

You might be surprised to know that just by changing your font type from Arial to Calibri or Century Gothic can save around 30% in ink!….So if you don’t need a fancy font type, or even large text, then change it to something smaller and simpler, oh and get rid of bold text too!

9)      Colour or Black??

Did you know that when you print a document with just black, your printer uses the black cartridge but if you print something with even a tiny amount of colour, it uses the colour cartridge to create black (cyan, magenta and yellow combined = black)?

So if you don’t need colour, don’t print it or you might see your colour cartridge run out quickly!

10)   Save money with vouchers, offers and promotions!

I hope you don’t mind a little shameless self-promotion here, but at CartridgeMonkey.com, not only do we have great prices on all ink and toner, and super-fast free delivery but we often give out up to 20% off through special offer emails, and on our Facebook and Twitter pages!

Discount vouchers are a great way to save and keep your cash where it belongs…in your pocket!

So there you have it! I hope my top 10 tips to get the most out of your ink cartridges will benefit you and help you to save some money, and remember you can always get great value on all ink, toner, paper and printers at CartridgeMonkey.com!

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