Ideal Bite

What's a draft no one should dodge?

Submitted by tmeronek on Thu, 05/17/2007 - 1:01am.

The Bite:

The one on your printer. Unless you're printing something superimportant, save ink and paper by using draft mode and, if it's an option, printing double-sided. Who could conscientiously object to that?

The Benefits:

Less waste. Each year, the world's discarded cartridges stacked end-to-end could circle the planet 3 times.
Cash savings. It's not rocket science: if you print double-sided, you'll buy half as much paper, plus if you print 100 pages in 50% draft mode instead of regular mode, you'll save as much as $2.
Faster printing. In a PC World test, a typical inkjet printed 12 ppm (pages per minute) in regular mode but cranked out 36 ppm in draft.

Personally Speaking:

Cricket wishes she could use draft mode for her paw prints.

Wanna Try:

Set your printer (or print software) to draft and double-sided.
GreenPrint - software that weeds out pages you don't want to print. PC-only ($35).
WriteExpress InkSaver - software that lets you control the amount of ink your printer uses, helping you save up to 75% of your ink. PC-only ($35).
HP Deskjet 6940dt Color Inkjet Printer - does automatic 2-sided printing ($165).

Kim Burgo and Tricia Patton