Home printers are nice to have at home, and ever so useful. Now that you are
Making the Most of your Home Printer, you may be questioning the quality of your printer.
Inkjet printers are nice to have if you are printing color photos once a week. If not, you may want to look into the benefits of a laser printer.
Buy in bulk. You know to save money on groceries and paper products by buying in larger quantities, but did you know that laser toner can also save you money? You will find the laser printer, as well as the toner cartridges, at a higher initial purchase price, but once you figure in the yield of a
toner cartridge versus inkjet, you will see the significant savings.
Longer lasting quality. To keep your inkjet from drying up, you need to print out all the colors once every week or so. If you are like me, daily printing is done in the office and the fun photos and useful coupons are printed as needed, which may not occur until the next holiday. Laser toner is a powder, it will not dry up and will be top quality whenever you print.
Large jobs. Not only can a laser printer wait longer until use, it is more productive at printing those large jobs when they do arise. Laser printers are recommended for offices and for anyone running heaving printing jobs.
Print Faster. In an office, or in a hurry? Laser printers print, well, at laser speed. Pardon the pun.
Quality text. While inkjets are superior for often printing photos, laser printers offer a superior text quality. You will want to look at what you print, as well as how often you print, when making the decision to switch to a Laser printer.
A clogged print head on your inkjet printer can stop your print job dead in its tracks, but this can be overcome with a little attention.
If there has been a long period of no printer use, or if you have brought an old inkjet printer or ink cartridge out of retirement, you may be faced with less than optimal prints.
As you print, small droplets of ink can get stuck around the many tiny holes that make up an inkjet printer head. Once these drops of ink dry, they can form a crust around the print head opening, clogging it with dry ink and causing it to print poorly.
If you are seeing poor quality print outs, your first step should be to perform a printer head cleaning. Simply open your Printer Settings on your computer and find your Printer Maintenance menu, as seen above, to clean the print head. Each menu will vary, but you should find a “Head Cleaning” option within any inkjet printer menu.
Once you have performed the built-in cleaning functions and followed up as needed, if this does not seem to do the job and is draining your precious ink there are a few ways to clean your print head manually.
If you have an inkjet printer like Epson or Brother, where the print head is usually part of the printer itself instead of the cartridge, you can use traditional rubbing alcohol on the print head to clean and remove dried ink residue. If you have an inkjet printer like Canon, HP, or Lexmark where the print head is usually part of the ink cartridge, you can clean the print head on the cartridge with a dry, soft cotton ball or clean cloth.
Don’t scrap an old inkjet printer that yields inferior printouts, what a waste to just throw the old one in a landfill. Make cleaning nozzles, unclogging print heads and dusting the exterior of your printer a regular part of your routine maintenance. You will maintain superior print quality and save yourself quite a bit of money.
Taking terrific photos is only half the fun. Those beautiful sceneries and special events, loving family moments and fun times with friends out on the town deserve more than to live in your camera.
You want lovely photographs printed, so that you can scrapbook and frame them to cherish for years to come, but this no longer means you need to make a trip to a photo lab. Print those beautiful, full color photos from your own printer.
If you haven’t printed in a while, or do not currently get the results you are looking for in a photograph, it would be wise to run a printer alignment, color calibration and print cartridge cleaning. These functions (accessible from the printer menu) prevent blurring, streaking and improperly aligned prints.
Set your printer for photo quality prints. While normal mode works well for drafts and text, you will get the finest photo printed by switching to the best mode or photo mode. Choose your printer’s highest possible color resolution. The greater the d.p.i. setting, the better your prints will be. Also in your printer preferences, set your printer to accommodate the type of paper you are using.
Print on high quality
photo paper. Color photographs generally look best on glossy photo papers, if printing classic black and white photos you may want to choose a matte finish photo paper.
Once you have printed your stunning photographs, give the ink up to 12 hours to dry to be safe before placing in a frame or scrapbook.
You probably have that printer sitting on the desk top at home, but do you take full advantage of this tool?
Print your photos. We love our digital cameras, cell phone cameras are a beloved convenience, and DSLR cameras are becoming increasingly popular by the soccer moms and budding photographers. Now that we have our photos in digital format, we sometimes forget to print photos. It is so nice to hang photos in your home and office, very nice to give framed photos as gifts, and always good to keep the most cherished photos in an additional format. It is cheaper and easier to print at home than the days of film. Are you taking advantage of the photo printing ability of your printer? Make sure you change the settings to photo quality, purchase a pack of
photo paper and print your favorite photos.
Put your printer to work for you. There are so many great coupons online, we no longer need to purchase newspapers, save junk mail and spend hours clipping. Websites like
RetailMeNot.com,
CouponQueeny.com and
MoneySavingMom.com are dedicated to providing the latest retail and grocery coupons that you can use in your local stores. Make sure you change the printer settings to a lower, ink saving quality, and print coupons to save you money now.
Keep the children occupied. Print your own
coloring books and puzzles, the preschoolers are sure to enjoy these on a rainy day. It may be Summer time, but you can keep the children learning and reviewing all year round with home work sheets.
How do you make the most out of your home printer?
What printer model do you use? Epson WorkForce 600 inkjet? HP LaserJet 1020? Brother MFC Multi-function 420CN inkjet?
Let us know!
Clickinks strives to supply ink and toner for all the most popular printers.
Post to our
Facebook wall or comment on our contest status posted. A lucky winner will receive their ink cartridge!
For an additional entry, follow
@Click_inks on Twitter and Tweet a message letting us know the name of your printer!
Open to residents of US and Canada. 1 Facebook winner plus 1 Twitter winner will be awarded their printer cartridge. Contest runs through July 31, 2010.
Clickinks asked, and you answered. What do you like to print? We proposed the question to you, our fans, and were delighted with your responses. From coupons, to homework, photos, to invites, your printer is getting a work out. And it is a good thing you know how to save money on ink at
http://www.clickinks.com/ We are so excited to announce our winners of the $50 in ink
Facebook fans:
Sandra from Florida is homeschooling
Britta from Idaho loves to print coupons
Twitter friends:
Miranda of Texas prints pictures to color for her triplets
Paula of Illinois has a new printer for photos of all the kids
Ink cartridge manufacturer Canon has released a new portable scanner ideal for Macbook users. Called the ImageFormula P-150M, the scanner weighs only two pounds and fits comfortably in a briefcase alongside your Macbook. Below we've compiled a list of the key features of the ImageFormula P-150M alongside the best comments from around the web – meaning you can decide if the
Canon release is a worthwhile upgrade to your existing scanner. Of course the ImageFormula P-150M is difficult to compare with other machines – this Mac-oriented portable scanner is one of a kind!
Features:• Small Size - 11 inches x 3.7 inches x 1.6 inches, so you can easily carry the ImageFormula P-150M around with you.
• 'Plug and Play' Functionality – meaning you simply plug the scanner into your Macbook and begin scanning, wherever you are.
• 15 ppm scanning speed – enabling you to upload pages quickly and easily.
• CaptureOnTouch software – so you can transfer your upload images to your iPad or iPod almost instantly.
• EverNote compatibility – meaning you can upload pages to Evernote.com, enabling you to access your files from any computer anywhere on the planet.
• Energy Star Certified – saving you money on electricity.
Reviews:Robin Morris, PCAdvisor.co.uk: “If you want fast quality scans on the road, the Canon ImageFormula P-150 scanner is currently the perfect balance of performance and portability.”
Anonymous, TechnoTalks.com: “The all-new Canon P-150M scanner is not only affordable but also extremely usefull for those who use iMac on the go.”
Kat Orphanides, ITPro.co.uk: “If your business relies on travelling representatives who need to file signed documents with a distant head office, this sturdy, high quality scanner is an excellent choice.”
Kat Orphanides, ExpertReviews.co.uk: “This lightweight portable scanner makes sense for business users on the road, but it's a niche product.”
Summary:The Canon ImageFormula P-150M can't compare to ordinary flatbed scanners. However, for travelling businessmen it is almost faultless.
Price:$295 from Canon
Sources
R Morris, 'Canon imageFormula P-150 Review,' PCAdvisor, January 2010.K Orphanides, 'Canon imageFormula P-150 Review,' ITPro, January 2010.'Canon P-150 Scanner Review,' TechnoTalks, May 2010.K Orphanides, 'Canon imageFORMULA P-150,' ExpertReviews, January 2010.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with having office printers on network is making sure each computer has the correct drivers for the printers. After all, without those drivers people are left staring at their text on the monitor – unable to print the page. And when you're talking about hundreds of people accessing dozens of printers in a corporation, the problem can become epidemic.
Fortunately now
Dell is releasing a download for their newest printers that lets people forgo drivers entirely. Instead, anyone connected to the network can print instantly from any Dell-produced printer; there's no need even for printer queue names and other details. The download is called
Dell Proximity Printing and – best of all – it's available free starting June 8th. It should save office IT managers a lot of headaches.
For more information visit Dell's website. In the meantime, for Dell ink cartridges at the lowest prices, trust
Clickinks.com.
The staff here at Clickinks.com find the smell of a freshly produced printout hard to beat – especially the smell of a printout produced using our quality
remanufactured cartridges. Recently though, conceptual designer Jeon Hwan Ju has proposed making printing a completely different olfactory experience: his freshly invented RICI printer uses coffee grinds for ink cartridges. The user literally takes their old coffee filters and places them into specially shaped cartridges before inserting into their printer – giving each printout the faint scent of Arabica beans (or whatever blend they enjoyed that morning.)
The RICI printer isn't perfect however. Intending to make his printer environmentally friendly for example, Hwan Ju hasn't included an electricity socket. The user is therefore required to manually feed the coffee grinds into the printer while the page is being produced, which may make printing both time consuming and incredibly tiring. Moreover, though coffee brands like Starbucks may guarantee the quality of their coffee, they probably won't guarantee the quality of their printouts.
Clickinks.com on the other hand offers a 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed with every purchase. And who knows – maybe one day we'll begin selling chocolate or hazelnut-scented cartridges, too.
Clickinks needs YOUR eyes, and we are paying everyone $45!Go on a "Scavenger Hunt" around
Clickinks.com, find any quirks or problems and we will give you $45 of Free Ink.
Come work for us now ...
- Provide detailed information of where and when the problem was discovered
- Up to 100 entrants will be rewarded
- Clickinks reserves the right to select winners
- Offer ends May 31, 2010
Errors may include, but are not limited to: Dead links, Bad pages, Images, Pricing, Cartridge numbers or Incorrect printers models.
Any "finds" should be emailed to
feedback@clickinks.com