How To Buy A Printer That Won?t Break The Bank

OK I confess I've bought at least 10 inkjet printers in the last 5 years and finally found one that I really like. I'm not going to mention the brand here but I will tell you what the must have features are for me.

After years of refilling HP-like inkjet cartridges where the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow tanks were all mixed together in one unit I decided to buy a printer that allowed you to change each color tank individually. Although a minor change this affected how much it cost to print a colored output page in a huge degree. I never liked the concept of having all of the colors in one cartridge to start with. Every time I went to replace an empty cartridge I wondered how much ink was left in the other two colored ink tanks. If you didn't notice they were always a dark color making it impossible to tell how much was actually in the tank.

My new unit seems to use the Yellow cartridge (black aside) more than any other color which makes me curse the days where I envisioned myself throwing money in the toilet by only using half of the colored ink in a multi color ink jet cartridge. This backs up my initial thought process and confirmed all suspicions.

Since I'm a small business owner and penny pinching is always a must, I continuously test how much mileage that I get out of a cartridge. As you well know the little pop up window tells you when your cartridge is running low and it seems like it's there to annoy you and serves no other purpose. Being the cheapo that I am I decided to ignore the warnings and bells and whistles that normally go off and run a cartridge to the end of its tank.

It was tense, a sense of childlike mischief came across my mental state. I was actually defying the printing gods by defying their warnings of certain doom, nefariously clicking the cancel on every warning message. Surely something spectacular would happen at the end of the life of this inkjet cartridge! I had gotten about a thousand messages warning me of the peril that was coming my way. I envisioned scenes from nuclear war footage and big things happening like the printer exploding or perhaps the printer cartridge police showing up at my house and arresting me for such gross disrespect for printer law. Whatever happened this would be BIG!

Well after running the cartridge for about a month I got a harmless message that the cartridge was now out. No big light show, no explosion no nothing, what a disappointment! Anyway, I installed a new cartridge, realigned the thing using the printing utility and was up and running in about five minutes.

The point of the whole ordeal was to figure out how many more print jobs that I could do without changing the ink. Thus, saving me some extra cash. Well a month of printing is nothing to scoff at and it ended up saving me around $5.00 by using the cartridge down to the last drop.

Will it work on your printer? I don't know.. But you should check out the manual for your printer to ensure that you won't damage it by running the cartridge dry.

But friend I choose to live life on the edge. =)

Alexis Allen is a self-described consumer advocate in the Home Electronics Industry. You can check out her latest articles on the cost of printing at http://www.cheap-toner-cartridges.com

---

How to Solve Multiple Paper Loading Problem in HP5L and HP6L Laser Printer

Have you ever encountered before the problem of having multiple paper loading in your HP LaserJet 5L and 6L? Do you know that this is caused by a defective separation pad where it's... Read More

Setting up a Network -- Wired or Wireless?

To Wire or Not to Wire Wireless networks are en vogue, but your installation won't be successful unless you chose the right type of network and set it up properly. Wired... Read More

A Review of Refurbished Toshiba Laptops

Toshiba offers a few of their refurbished laptops in the "Clearance Store" of their official website toshibadirect.com. There you can purchase their laptops at 20-30% discounts, refurbished and as good as new. Toshiba... Read More

Cisco CCNA Certification: An Illustrated Guide To Ethernet CSMA/CD

When you're studying for your CCNA exams, you're going to study the theory of technologies we basically take for granted in networking. CSMA/CD is one of those technologies. It works beautifully and you... Read More

What is Blu-Ray DVD

Video technology has increased significantly over the past years, and is continuing to grow at an incredible rate. Digital Video Disc's aka DVD's are the most likely the last big jump in consumer... Read More

Toner Cartridges - How They Work

In the past computers and their accompanying printers were huge. Toner reservoirs and toner cartridges were used instead of ink cartridges like the ones in use today. Toner cartridges were difficult and messy... Read More

What Tablet PCs Can Do for You

Tablet PCs are great. If you are a mobile person, and you have never considered getting a tablet PC in the past, now is as good a time as any to start checking... Read More

Looking for Information on CD Duplication and Replication?

Time is one of the most important things we have that we are always short on. One way to maximize your time is to have the most up to date technology available. But,... Read More

How To Stop Junk Faxes From Wasting Your Paper and Toner

Junk faxes waste the resources of every business. It is estimated that they cost businesses tens of millions of dollars a year in wasted paper, toner and fax machine maintenance. There is nothing... Read More

Security Risks and Ways to Decrease Vulnerabilities in a 802.11b Wireless Environment

IntroductionThis document explains topics relating to wireless networks. The main topics discussed include, what type of vulnerabilities exist today in 802.11 networks and ways that you can help prevent these vulnerabilities from happening.... Read More

How To Choose The Best Student Laptop?

How To Choose the Best Student Laptop?Merchants are singing those three magic words again, 'Back to School' and the fallout is everywhere!Just as you're getting your deep dark pre-cancerous tan going -- you... Read More

Your Business versus Mother Nature

Business Consultants earn hundreds of thousands of dollars every year showing businesses how to improve their productivity. All business consultants in the Information Technology area agree that the biggest threat to business survival... Read More

RFID for Beginners

RFID technology is used frequently today and has been around since the 1920s, but not many people know about, or understand it. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification and is used to store... Read More

DVD ROMs

DVD CD ROMs have become predominantly the most used CD drive for desktop and notebook computers. They are very reliable and now come as a standard in most computers. If you are looking... Read More

Rear Projection TV Facts - Understanding the Pros & Cons of Rear Projection in the Home Theater

Rear Projection Television - An Affordable OptionA great deal of consumer appeal for Rear Projection TV systems arise out of the shear simplicity that this product offers as an immediate solution to getting... Read More

Digital Cameras, Media, and Card Readers

With the dropping prices on digital cameras and digital media in the past few years there is really a need for a quick reliable transfer method for your pictures to your personal computer.Using... Read More

Easy to Execute!

Plug and play equipment or hardware solves the problem of driver installation, re-starting routines, and generally speaking, "hassle", for those who are not technically proficient.If your computer supports "Plug and Play", then, as... Read More

Obsolete Is A Dirty Word (Intel Pentium 64 Bit Microchip)

Get ready everyone, home computers are about to set new LAN speed records! The Intel 64-bit microchip will soon be powering the new line of Pentium 4 computers. This long awaited sizzling fast... Read More

Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX Review

Nvidia has done it again, with it's newest video card, the geforce 7800 GTX. If money is no object and you demand the best, this is the video card for you.The 7800 GTX,... Read More

Your Printer Is Out Of Ink -- Now What?

We've all been there. You're in the middle of printing out an important document and your printer suddenly stops. It's the dreaded "out of ink" message. So you pull your backup ink cartridges... Read More

LCD Monitors: A Catching-On Technology

If you've been in the market for a new computer monitor fairly recently, you might have noticed just how many more LCD monitors you see in the stores now.It's obvious that the main... Read More

How To Choose The Best Gaming Laptop

The gaming laptop is coming of age! It is steadily increasing in popularity as performance quality goes up. Gamers now regularly consider laptops or notebooks when searching for that perfect gaming machine.With each... Read More

Ink Cartridges - A Humble Beginning

Computers and their accompanying printers were huge years ago. In the past toner reservoirs and toner cartridges were used instead of ink cartridges like those used now. It was difficult to fill a... Read More

How to Read CRT Tube Part Numbers

All picture tubes, whether monochrome or color type are identified by a specific code consisting of numbers and letters. The codes are different from each other because different tubes have different characteristics.For example,... Read More

Tips To Select Proper Hard drive

Day by day computers are getting advanced. Capacity and performance are increasing with every passing year. This is true for the primary storage also. Latest Hard disks are getting bigger in capacity and... Read More

5 Tips For Buying The Right Laptop Computer

It's easy to be intimidated by all the laptop models on the market today. There are literally dozens and dozens in every price range.The key to finding the right one for you is... Read More

A Guide to Refurbished IBM Laptops

IBM boasts a very large array of older and newer refurbished laptops on their website ibm.com. Look for "Notebooks: IBM Certified Used Equipment." There you can buy any of dozens of models and... Read More

Ten Tips to Safeguard Your Laptops

The following is a list of tips to help safeguard your laptop while traveling or conducting business.1. Never leave your laptop unattended. Keep your laptop in your physical possession at all times and... Read More

What is ESR Meter?

All capacitors have a certain amount of resistance to the passage of AC current. ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) is the sum of all internal resistances of a capacitor measured in Ohms. An ideal... Read More