How To Get The Most Out Of Your Black Ink Cartridge
Most recent color printers have a separate cartridge for black printing. This is much more cost effective than having all the colors and black in the same cartridge, as some older printers did. The majority of people print more black than any other color, so being able to replace it separately just makes sense.
Even though it can be replaced separately from the color cartridges, it's still one of the more expensive inkjet supplies. There are some simple steps you can take to improve the life of your cartridge, however.
The first thing you can do is to adjust the default print quality for your black and white printing. The printer settings for almost all printers let you adjust the "print mode" for various qualities.
They're usually labelled as something like "draft mode" or "high quality mode". Some printers may show the resolution settings instead - something like 300DPI, 1200DPI or 4800DPI.
The higher the print quality, the more ink is used so by lowering the default setting you can save quite a bit of ink. If you're printing something to keep as a record but don't need the top quality, the lower settings will be more than adequate.
Most of us print things like email messages, copies of web sites, etc. to file away for some reason, and these rarely need to be done at the best quality of the printer.
When you do need to print a photo or a good copy of some document, it's just a matter of changing the setting back to the better option before printing.
Another way to get more out of your black cartridge is to print multiple pages per sheet. Some printers have an option in the settings to print 2, 4 or even more pages per sheet. If your printer doesn't offer this option, you can software such as www.fineprint.com that will do it for you. (And if you use a Mac computer, OS X offers this option for all printers.)
These pages will obviously be quite a bit smaller than if you print them on a single page, but they're still more than readable in most cases. If you're just printing something for your own use and the presentation isn't critical, this can save quite a bit of ink.
