Someone asked recently if it’s possible for the ink in their printer to harden. I don’t know for sure about getting “hard,” but the moisture inside of your inkjet cartridges are full of moisture. That liquid can evaporate, leaving you with something that is not usable. You have to exercise your printer so that doesn’t happen!

When I say exercise, I mean USE the thing, of course. Print out something small at least once a week – enough for the ink to actually be used. Wouldn’t it be great if we could automate that somehow? Let’s say there was a browser extension or desktop application that we could schedule… our printer would then automagically print something out like once a week to keep itself nice and fresh.

You may think it’s a “waste” of ink to print something if you don’t really need it. You’re wasting far more, though, if you let it sit and your ink goes to waste. Think of things in the long run, not just the here and now.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Kodak. All opinions are 100% mine.

I print. You print. We all print. However, just because we all print the same amount doesn’t mean that we’re spending the same amount of money on our supplies. Maybe it’s time to rethink your ink strategy?

Just how much ink does your printer go through? More importantly, how much are you paying for that ink? Are you over-spending? You can easily find out using the overpayment calculator on Kodak’s website. I found out that I have overpaid $137.16 for my ink in the past year. Gee, what could I have done with that money?

I could have gotten 4 GB of additional RAM for my computer. That’s a lot of extra memory, folks.

MORE USB! I love USB devices, including regular old USB flash drives. A Geek can never have enough. With my savings, I could have purchased 24 of these little 2 GB USB 2.0 flash drives.

I love to watch movies, and I love to store media on a physical disc for safe-keeping. What better way to do that than with the 105 dual-layer DVD +R discs I could have bought?

My iPhone doesn’t have enough Apps, that’s all there is to it. You may think I have more than enough, but I could have 138 more of them right about now had I saved money on my ink!

My backyard is a mess. It needs some more work done to it, including about 342 pounds of river pebbles. I could have gotten those with my savings, had I been using the Kodak printer!

I bet if I try hard, I could find 489 friends in my address book that I could have sent postcards to. With the money I would have saved, I could have purchased the stamps for all of those postcards. That’s nearly 500 of them!

I lose my ink pens all the time. It never fails. I’ll go to grab a pen, and there’s just none to be found. Had I saved all this money by using the Kodak printer, I’d have a stockpile of 762 black ink pens lying around.

Om nom nom A&W Root Beer Barrels. Those little hard candies are addictive and delicious. I’d have 2025 of them sitting here right now if I had saved money. Of course, I would likely need to get some exercise after eating them all.

You know those little wooden toothpicks that are mint-flavored? They come individually wrapped so that they stay minty fresh. I can’t get enough of those. They are just… cool. I could have 50,528 of them right now. WHY am I not saving money on ink?

Lastly, I could have purchased additional storage space for 348,996 pictures online. That is one heck of a lot of photos that I could be sharing with the World.

What would you get with your savings?

By using a Kodak printer instead of the one that’s sitting behind me right now, I could have any number of really cool things. Rethink your ink!.

Thanks to Kristin Marshall for all of the awesome artwork used in this post.

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There are two types of ink cartridges today: one is a complete cartridge which includes a print head, the other is only an ink reservoir. The advice I was given when I bought my last printer was to buy one whose cartridges contain the print heads. That way, each time you buy a new ink cartridge, you’re getting a brand new print head.

My previous printer had the print heads built right in to the printer itself, not on the ink cartridges. One day, the print heads failed. I called customer service, and was told that it wasn’t worth it to fix the machine. They said I was better off buying a new one! I was so unhappy with their response that I DID buy a new printer – from a different company! I made sure to purchase one that uses ink cartridges that include the print heads.

Every time I buy new ink, I get new print heads. I never have to worry about them failing again. Generic cartridges don’t come with print heads, of course. My recommendation is to not buy generic ones… but to simply take your name-brand ones in for refills to save yourself money. These work great for home use. When the print heads finally do fail on the ink cartridges, simply throw them out and buy new ones. This is going to save you a lot of money, and a lot of headaches.

Excellent advice! Thanks, Teebo, for reaching out to help others refrain from making this same mistake!

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So many people get frustrated when their printer messes up, and end up just buying a new one. Here are some tips to help you keep your printer humming along in perfect shape.

• Check the ink. Many printer manufacturers have made it very easy to tell which ink goes where using a variety of numbers, colors and shapes on the ink cartridge and its caddy. Yet even the best of us have been known to put them in wrong. Check to make sure the color cartridge is in the color caddy and the black and white one is in its proper caddy. Make sure it is for the proper printer model as well. But one thing people fail to realize is that ink cartridges DO go bad and have expiration dates printed on them. I discovered this was a real issue when many of the departments at my school decided to save a few bucks by using recycled and refilled ink cartridges exclusively. When many of our Ink jets started functioning strangely, I checked the ink after exhausting all other efforts. Sure enough they were using recycled ink in a cartridge that expired 2 years ago! I popped in a new, brand name (albeit, pricier) cartridge and the issue was fixed.
• Do the power hokey pokey. I developed this routine over time to the point where many of my users now know it by heart and can fix the issue themselves, though I am still trying to work it into a song. Sometimes, an ink jet (or any printer for that matter) just needs a good reboot. In the same way that rebooting your computer seems to fix almost anything. Hold the power button down on the printer while it is on. While holding it in, unplug the printer’s power. Once the printers power is unplugged, continue to hold in the power button for 5 or 6 seconds. After about 10 or 15 seconds of doing nothing, plug the printer back in and press its power button. This solves an amazing amount of issues. An even easier solution that works many times in certain situations is to just unplug the printer from its power source and plug it back in. Some buildings (like the one I work in) are grounded very poorly. After a good southern thunderstorm in an Alabama summer, it seemed like half of my ink jets simply didn’t turn on no matter how hard one might press the power button. Unplugging the printer and plugging it back in seemed to discharge some sort of mysterious static electricity “bubble” that prevented it from getting power. I can’t explain this in anyway, I just know it has worked many times.
• Learn to speak printer-eese. Many times, the printer simply tells you what it wrong with it with a series of lights. You just need to learn to decode the message. Most printer manufactures list what these lights and their blinking sequences mean on their website. Finding out what these lights mean can help you realize that the problem may be nothing more than a sheet of paper jammed up inside the printer. The website will also tell you or even show you illustrations on how to correct the issue.
• Saving the worst of last; Reinstall the latest printer drivers. Yes, it’s that age-old trump card than any computer tech throws down when all else fails. But seriously, printer drivers can become corrupt for any number of reasons, and uninstalling your printer and installing the latest drivers (found at the manufactures website) can do nothing but good things for you, even if this doesn’t fix the problem at hand. Many times the problem can be fixed just by popping in the CD that came with your printer. If your CD ROM is set to auto play, the CD should give you the option to uninstall or even reinstall the drivers. You won’t get the latest drivers, but you will get the original drivers your printer came with, and the ones it was using when it worked properly.

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – My round table gang and I came up with a few tips to help you save on expensive ink for your printers.

Three of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, and Wirelesspacket.

Wirelesspacket works in the commercial printing industry. He definitely is against using off brand cartridges, or refill kits. The ink just isn’t as good, and honestly doesn’t last as long. I’ve noticed that as well, and always recommend using the manufacturer’s brand for your particular printer.

Another thing you can do is to change your print layout. Print using Economy mode, instead of the default basic mode. This will save you a lot of ink in the long run, and you won’t really notice any difference in the quality.

When it comes to “practice” printing for color brochures and documents, always print your tests out in black and white. Of course you’re going to want at least one test run in full color. But when you’re just checking the layout and things, use black and white. Colored ink is not cheap!

Lastly, make sure to buy a printer with separate cartridges for color and black ink. This will save you a lot of money, as well.

What other tips and tricks do you have for saving ink cartridges and toners? How do you save money?

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