The Top Useful Printer Ink Hacks

If you rely on the conventional office printer to perform your daily work, it is very likely you are spending a small fortune on ink and cartridges. Today’s ink cartridges have gotten quite sophisticated and can also be very expensive.

Additionally, some of these ink cartridges don’t appear to be doing a very economical job and you could find yourself being constantly alerted to “Low Ink” or “Refill Cartridge” notifications, even when there is no possible way the cartridge is empty all the way.

The first thing to do –after waving an angry fist in the air and vowing revenge on these money-grubbing corporations– is to immediately rethink your printing habits and implement some economical hacks and procedures that will keep you from dishing out your cash to the cartridge and ink emporium.

Following are some practical pointers to practice in the office:

Tip 1: Resetting the Cartridge

Understanding the way the cartridge is designed has a lot to do with getting the most bang for your bucks. Each cartridge features a small circuit board, which –in addition to other functions– prompts the computer to give you the “Refill Cartridge” notification, however, it will often send this message if there is still plenty of ink left in the cartridge.

This could be a design flaw, a way to prevent large high-resolution projects from starting and not being completed or a conspiracy to keep you coming back for more ink– but what ever the reason it can be circumvented with a simple hack — and all that expensive ink used efficiently.

Before throwing the cartridge in the bin, examine it closely. What you are looking for is a tiny reset button –usually located above the small circuit board mentioned earlier. Once located this can be reset with a paper clip.

Then reinsert the cartridge and use the remaining ink.

Tip 2: Review the Print Options Carefully

There is a virtual plethora of options and settings on today’s high-tech printers –these affect the final printing quality and can be adjusted dramatically. The resolution of the document or paper you print determines how much ink will be used to create the images or fonts on the paper.

By lowering the resolution, the images and text will appear much lighter but still easily recognizable and legible. The default setting may be pretty high –something like 600 or 1200 DPI. Reset this to 300 dpi, which is more than enough to maintain clarity and increase your cartridge output 3 fold.

This will also reduce printing time — and time is money.

Tip 3: Only Use Colored Ink Cartridges for Color Printing

Replacing and refilling color ink cartridges is a lot more expensive than monochromatic ink. Unfortunately, some colors are designed to use a combination of all the colors of the rainbow to print a document with no color — you would think only the black cartridge is used, but you would be wrong.

If you look closely at your document you may notice that the black is more like off-black — soon you will notice your color ink is gone and you didn’t print a single color sheet. If this is happening you might consider selecting the “Black and White” or “Grayscale” option. This will tell the printer to print in only inexpensive black ink.

Even with this option selected many big name printers continue to use colored ink. The best way to address this is either by purchasing a monochromatic printer –a pretty inexpensive option– or, depending on the printer, removing the colored cartridge.

This may cause the printer to balk and complain, but eventually you will be rewarded with economical print quality.

Tip 4: Buy the Right Ink Cartridges

Ink cartridges are available for a variety of purposes and researching the best printer for your purpose — before purchasing is the best way to save big on office expenses.

Ink cartridges may come in small to XL sizes. Although, you will certainly get a better deal by buying an XL cartridge you should also consider how much printing you actually do. Ink tends to dry up and any ink you haven’t used in over 4 – 6 months may end up wasted.

It may be best to buy a smaller cartridge that will be used efficiently.

The Home Electricity Surge Protection Facts

Lately, the normal American family has turned out to be more reliant on current innovation to keep up its way of life. If that you check out your home, you will see that it is loaded with new bits of hardware that did not exist five or ten years back. The majority of this gear carries with it an entire new arrangement of issues that a few of us never at any point considered. What might happen if one day the greater part of your apparatuses stopped to exist? I’m not discussing any fantastical connivance: I am alluding to the likelihood that your home’s electrical framework could be influenced by a power surge.

Consider it:

How much cash is appended to your electrical framework? How horrendous would it be on the off chance that you didn’t have or expected to supplant each bit of electrical appliance in your whole home? The normal home gets hit with more than 20 power spikes for every day. These spikes lessen the life of your machines and gadgets up to 30 percent.

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In the event that you possessed one of the 30 million homes that got struck by a power surge a year ago, you would see the amount you rely on upon your electrical gadgets for the duration of the day. A power surge could harm your PC and your TV, as well as lose your dishwasher, icebox and microwave. Your air conditioning framework keeps running on power, so it is likewise at danger. It just takes one mid-year tempest to wipe out your HVAC system. The most noticeably awful part is that numerous property holders’ protection systems don’t cover power surges. With the measure of cash you would spend supplanting the greater part of that hardware, you could travel to a tropical island and spend a month drinking pina coladas!

Surge protection ought to be tended to in two distinct ways, due to the fact that all surges are not the same. Some begin outside and work their way in. Others begin from inside of the house itself. The two sorts of protection are entire-house surge protection and purpose of-utilization surge protection.

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Electrical surges originating from the outside of the home have a tendency to be created by things like helping strikes and broken utility lines. These sorts of surges are less normal than inside surges, however are all more annihilating to your home’s electrical framework. Surges coming into your home from the primary framework won’t just decimate your delicate gadgets, however might likewise pulverize the majority of your significant machines and harm the wiring in your walls too.

Interior surges are created from inside of the home. They make up around 70 percent of the power surges that an ordinary home goes up against. They are typically not as destroying as surges coming from outside, but rather they will damage your home’s powerless hardware, for example, TVs, PCs and stereo gear. The fundamental driver of an inner surge is a sudden demand on the home’s electrical framework. You may have seen the lights diminishing when the compressor in your fridge or ventilation system kicks on. This is the course book meaning of an inside surge.

Surge Protection Variables

There are three principle ways that surge defenders ought to be judged: brace level (when), surge quality (how much), and reaction time (how quick).

Clamp Level

Alludes to the voltage level that causes the surge defender to initiate. In an entire house defender, you ought to search for a brace level of around 150 volts. For purpose of-utilization, the clasp level ought to be an even lower 130 volts, in light of the fact that they are intended to secure the small, more delicate gadgets in your home.

Surge Strength .

Is the time when the gadget comes up short or penances itself. This is measured in amps of surge. You need the entire house surge defender to be appraised around 150,000 amps. A state of-utilization surge defender can be a lesser 100,000 amps, on the grounds that less power goes to particular points.

Reaction Time

Alludes to the measure of time it takes for a surge defender to initiate after a surge has been identified. Quality gadgets enact so rapidly that they are measured in nanoseconds! Purpose of-utilization defenders should be significantly snappier to secure at-risk hardware.

Here is a simple video explaining home surge protector from Angie’s List Youtube Channel,

 

The Right Way To Recycle Your Electronics for Earth Day or Any Day

The typical household owns more and more electronic products every year. This relates to how quickly technology is advancing. People are relying on their electronics to communicate faster, to get things done regardless of where they are, and to obtain entertainment more easy than ever before. However, what happens to electronics that people no longer want? If there is still useful life left in the equipment, they can be donated and reused. If the equipment can no longer be used in their current state, they can be recycled so that valuable materials can be salvaged and reused for new products. Here are some guidelines on how to recycle your electronics properly to prevent waste.

Many states have regulations on how you should dispose of and recycle old electronic equipment. It is advisable that you find out what those laws are in your state of residence. You can often find this information on your state’s government website.

Fortunately, you do not have to go about this alone to do it right. In the U.S., one easy way is to look for an e-waste recycler in your local area who has been certified by the Basel Action Network. The BAN is a non-profit organization whose primary goal is to prevent the passing of toxic electronic waste from industrialized countries to developing countries. The organization is named after the Basel Convention developed by the UN to prevent the disposal of toxic waste into development countries. BAN monitors this activity. A certified e-waste recycler adheres to guidelines set forth so that you can have peace of mind that your e-waste will not be harming any communities. Go to BAN’s website to find a certified e-recycler, then just drop off your equipment. It is an easy way to fulfill your duties.

Local schools and government institutions often sponsor e-recycling days. This allows people in the communities to conveniently bring in their old electronics to a designated drop-off location. The institution takes over with the recycling from there. A calendar of the scheduled e-recycling days can often be found in the newspaper or on the institution’s website. Your local public library should also have information on upcoming e-waste recycling events.

Another way is to check with your local merchant of electronic products. Sometimes they will take old electronics take them to a recycler for you. Big box electronics merchants may provide this service as a courtesy for their customers. If you choose this option, do insist on seeing some written statement about their commitment in recycling e-waste responsibly.

With everyone purchasing new phones, mobile devices, computers, peripherals, TVs, and smart appliances, it is important to learn how to properly recycle equipment. Equipment that has useful life left in it should be donated to people who can use it. For equipment that has reached the end of its useful life, proper disposal is necessary. Nowadays, people tend to buy new electronics every couple of years. Mindful recycling is necessary in order to prevent unwanted equipment from polluting the environment. This is everybody’s obligation.

Read our ink toner recycling tips and guidelines.