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How to Change Printer Quality

We all know that inkjet printer manufacturers make their money by selling you expensive ink cartridges. My personal preference is to use a laser printer since I normally don't need color printing. The manufacturers almost give away the printers (and as often as not, they do give them away), because they know that you're going to become an ink cartridge junkie eventually, only able to get your cartidges from them. If the color ink comes with all the colors in one cartridge, the situation stinks that much more as you'll pay to replace all three (or more) colors when you run out of just one!

Average ink cartridges cost $20-60 each and print a few hundred pages at best. Most laser toner cartridges cost $100 at most and print thousands of pages. The math is a no-brainer!

So, what do you do? Well, if it's not too late, spend $100-200 and get yourself a good laser all-in-one. Personally, I've got a Samsung SCX-4100, and I love it. It runs around $140, and I use it for copying, scanning, and printing. (On the rare occasion that I need to fax something, I just scan it in and print it to the Windows XP virtual Fax printer.) The toner cartidge for this particular printer is $70 and yields approximately 3,000 pages.

Barring this option, since most of you already have that color printer, how about conserving the ink? Most of the time, printing in draft mode produces printouts that are completely readable, and they can result in a significant reduction in ink used. Basically, the higher quality the printout, the more the paper is being saturated with ink. So let's reduce the amount of ink that you're using for everyday printing . . . .

  1. Click Start, then Control Panel.
  2. Double-click on Printers and Faxes.
  3. Right-click on the printer in question, and select Printing Preferences.
  4. Each printer's preferences window will look a little bit different, but you're looking for something like Print Quality. Generally the choices will be something akin to Draft, Normal, and Best. Your printer may even have more options, like Fast Draft, Fast Normal, Normal, High, and Picture. The lower the quality of the printout, the less ink it will use. Changing the quality here sets the default for all print jobs until you come back and change it.

This is great for everyday printing, but when it's time to print out that resume or your kid's term paper, you want it to look good. To change the print quality for just one document:

  1. When you choose to Print a file, there is usually a Properties button next to the name of the printer. Click this button.
  2. The screen that you see should be the same as what you saw in Printing Preferences above, but any changes you make here in Print Quality will only apply to that document. Select the desired print quality, and click OK.
  3. Continue to print as normal.


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