If you print a lot of documents, most likely you have gone through your share of printer toner cartridges, ribbons, or the like. While printers have drastically gone down in price, it doesn't seem like the prices for needed B&W and color cartridges have dropped, does it?

How about saving some money for a change.

When you print a document, a printer dialog box normally appears. Instead of just blindly pressing the "Print" or "OK" button, take some time and learn the control panel. Most printers default to 360 or 720 dots per inch (dpi), perhaps even printing in color when available. If you are just printing out a proof or draft document, do you REALLY need this detail or can you do without fine-graded shading and just deal with the actual meat of the document? By learning the control panel (which may involve glancing at the printer's manual - gasp) you can print using what is called "economy mode", saving your printer toner yet giving you a completely readable version of your draft document.

And no, not every draft document needs color, either. If you are just checking for grammar, misspells, etc., turn black & white mode on and save your color cartridge for real print jobs.

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