Little known printer tricks for reducing business printing costs…

Lexmark has sent out the following list of tips to help you reduce the cost of printing. In fact, this advice works for any manufacturer’s printer line as well.

Customize your printer setting and save.

Did you know that you can change the settings on your printer to save paper and even energy? In fact, one simple change, like switching to 2-sided printing, can reduce your paper consumption by up to 50 percent.

The following small changes can help you save big while avoiding many of the typical printing problems—and many of them can be made with little or no reduction in performance or quality. Best of all, you can change these settings in a snap, all from the main menu of your printer:

	• Print double sided: Set your printer to "duplex mode" to print on both sides of your paper. You'll save paper and the environment.
	• Use black and white: Change your settings to black and white printing, and make color the exception.
	• Adjust the darkness: Set your ink or toner darkness slightly lower to reduce consumption and get more from each cartridge.
	• Print only when you're ready: Set your printer to "print and hold" a print job in the printer until you are ready to retrieve it, instead of sending it to print and forgetting to pick it up.
	• Print in draft mode: If you have an inkjet, set it to "draft mode" to use less ink for internal and draft documents, and to print much faster. You can then switch to higher quality settings when you need to print the final version.