March 18, 2002

With the price of inkjet cartridges being sky high I've found an alternative to the high prices.  Refilling the cartridges is very easy and they last a lot longer.  Check out weink.com for refill kits. 

Another thing you can do to help reduce the costs of using ink jet printers is to setup multiple printer icons with different properties.  Though not true with all printer, they claim the draft mode in H-P printers, which is much faster than normal printing, uses about 1/2 the amount of ink versus printing in normal mode.  When I compare the printouts side by side from my H-P DeskJet, you can hardly tell a difference. 

I created 3 icons in the printer panel for my printer.  One icon is the regular icon installed for using the printer in normal printing mode.  The next icon is the same icon but has the printer properties set for draft mode which I also set the properties to print in grayscale mode (prints pictures in black an white, thus conserving color ink until final printing).  I use this icon as the default.  It saves the color ink when I don't need to print a color document and conserves the black ink and increases the printing speed.  The third icon is set for draft mode also, but this icon is set for color printing.

Unless you are printing pictures and need real vivid colors, the draft printing works just fine, particular for proofing your project.  Some LaserJet printers can also be setup the same way.  You can also refill LaserJet cartridges although I personally haven't tried it yet. 

The link above also covers LaserJet printers. Over the course of time, using draft printing is quite adequate for every day needs and conserves ink and toner so the cost of printing is reduced considerably. 

NOTE: Although refilling inkjet cartridges is very easy, it does pay to read the directions.  The black cartridges have a bladder in them that you fill with ink.  After you're done, you plug the hole with a setscrew provided in the kit.  The color cartridges have three holes, red, yellow, and blue.  You inject the ink into felt in each of the cavities.  Since there are three more plugs, if you don't read the instructions, you put them in the holes and find out the cartridge won't work.  When all else fails and you look at the instructions, you will find out you DO NOT plug the holes in the color cartridges.  I personally have found the cartridges to last as long as three times longer when you refill them, and the quality of the ink is the same or better than the originals.

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