gHacks technology news » printer

Eco-Friendly Printer RiTi Suggests Coffee And Tea Instead Of Ink

Martin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:56:44 +0000

Many computer users have one thing in common: They drink coffee, lots of it. The coffee dregs usually lands in the bin. This can be a thing of the past if the eco-friendly printer RiTi makes it from concept to prototype in the near future. The RiTi Printer replaces traditional printer ink with coffee or tea dregs. Anyone who ever tried to print with coffee grounds knows that the colors are lighter than printouts with printer ink. They are on the other hand perfectly readable which might make them a good alternative for internal use.

The concept of the RiTi printer goes further than that. It does not require a power source for the actual printing process which is also something that traditional printers require. The printout is created by moving the ink case left and right manually. This obviously means that this method is not suited for printing out many papers at once.

Users who work regularly with printers might not be inclined to give that new printer concept a try as it opens a can of questions and possible problems:

It is not practicable to print many documents
The quality of the printout differs
Only black and white printouts
Coffee or tea dregs required to print

The RiTi printer could on the other hand prove to be the printer of choice for environmentally interested users who do occasional printouts.

source Greener Gadgets

Save Printer Ink With EcoFont

Martin — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:31:04 +0000

Printer Ink is often referred to as liquid gold. It is pretty expensive and ways to save printer ink are always in high regard as they can save individuals and companies lots of money over the years. There are basically two things users can do once the printer has been bought and installed to save printer ink. The first is to optimize the layout and elements that get printed while the second is all about how it gets printed on the paper.

A good way to save printer ink using optimization is to remove elements that are not needed in a printout. A user who wants to print out an article on a website might not need the menus, advertisements and comments that go along with it on the website. The second option comes down to specifying a print quality and font.

Ecofont has been designed for this exact purpose. Its nature does not make it applicable for all printouts but should be fine for internal printouts. The font makes use of a very obvious observation which centers around the idea that a font with less visible areas requires less ink. Ecofont therefor is a font with holes. This holes can save up to 20% of the usual amount of ink needed to print pages with a normal font.

It should be pretty obvious that this font is usually not one that should be used to print out important papers. Ecofont is offered as a free download at the creator’s website.

Tags: ecofont, font, ink, printer, printer ink, printer tips, printing tips, save ink, save printer ink

ID Card Photo Printing

Martin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:10:02 +0000

ID card photo printing refers to the process of printing a number of photos in ID card format on a local printer. The ID photo has to be on the computer system and can be loaded directly into the ID card photo printing software. Once the photo has been loaded it is possible to select the number of photos per page that shall be printed. The maximum number of photos per page is 30.

A click on the Print Now button will send the print job to the local printer so that the ID card photo can be printed the selected amount of times on the page.

There is not anything special about this printing software and the same effect could be initiated by almost any software that can display images and provide printing possibilities. The main advantage of using ID card photo printing software is the ease of use. It does not take longer than a few seconds to start the print job whereas it usually takes longer to do the same in non-specialized software programs.

ID Card Photo is compatible with most versions and editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website and requires that at least one printer is installed on the computer system.

Tags: id, id card, id card photo, id printing, photo printing, print photos, printer, printing, printing software, windows software

Stalled Printer Repair

Martin — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:23:36 +0000

If you regularly print documents on your computer you will eventually encounter a rather annoying problem: stuck print jobs. It happens that a print job gets stuck somehow. Sometimes these print jobs cannot be deleted from the print queue. The consequence is that all later print jobs will be blocked by the stuck one.

We already mentioned how you can manually deal with stuck print jobs which basically involved stopping the Print Spooler service in Windows and deleting the stuck print jobs manually in the Windows directory.

Disabling and enabling the Print Spooler service and deleting files is definitely not the most comfortable way of dealing with stuck print jobs. The portable software Stalled Printer Repair (via Instant Fundas) offers a one-click solution to the problem. This is good news for everyone who has to deal with stuck print jobs regularly on his computer system.

The software program will detect a stuck print job automatically and display them in the program’s interface. A click on the Purge Print Job button will delete all stalled print jobs on the computer system so that the printer queue and printer can be used again on the computer.

Tags: portable software, print jobs, print queue, print software, printer, printer tips, stalled print jobs, stalled printer repair, stuck print jobs

Ghacks Christmas Giveaway: FinePrint

Martin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:00:13 +0000

Five days to go before the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway ends. We have given away lots of licenses to many popular software programs and today’s program is no exception to that rule. FinePrint is a printing software that can be used to manage print jobs before they are send to an actual printer on the computer system. It is basically a tool to reduce paper and ink usage on a computer system without reducing the quality of the prints.

If you regularly print out websites or documents you must have noticed that they do not fit perfectly on paper all the time. Websites are usually to large to fit correctly on paper which will move some elements – usually those on the right side that do not fit on the print – to a second paper. This could leave you with menus that will be printed on their own paper, something that is not normally needed at all.

FinePrint offers ways to deal with those pages and a few additional features that make it an interesting software for everyone who prints out those documents regularly.

Installation of FinePrint should go through without problems. It adds itself as a virtual printer to the computer system suggesting to the user that it should be set as the default printer on the system. Either way print jobs can then be send to the software application where they will be listed in the main interface.

You can send multiple print jobs to FinePrint and the software will display them all in its interface. One of the major features of the software is to remove pages that are not needed in the printout. You can flip through the pages and zoom in on them to find out if a page is needed or not. Pages that are not needed can be removed easily with the click of the button.

FinePrint will display the paper savings in the status bar which should give you an indication of its effectiveness.

Removing papers from a print job is one thing, combining pages on one paper is another. The printing software can print 1,2,4 or 8 sheets of the print job on a single sheet. It can also print them double-sided if the printer is supporting that feature. Printing 8 pages on one sheet is good for eagle-eye users or archiving purposes.

Additional options are available to save computer ink. Graphics can be removed from the printouts and the quality can be set to grayscale to use only black ink when printing. You can define borders, margins and bindings and also add stamps (confidential, proof, internal use etc) to the papers.

If the document is ready for printing you can simply send it to one of the connected printers by pressing the printer button in the FinePrint interface.

The only thing that is missing is the ability to remove or move objects on a page as well. Other than that is is a great application to save paper. Could be very handy in office or for users who regularly print out websites and other documents.

We are giving away five FinePrint licenses to lucky readers. If you want to win a copy leave a comment and tell us how many trees you would save with this software ;)

Tags: computer ink, fineprint, ghacks Christmas giveaway, ink, printer, printer ink

Share Printer

Martin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:08:43 +0000

Using the Internet to send print jobs to another computer that has a printer connected to it is usually more comfortable than trying to install the printer as a network device in a network. Share Printer software makes it as easy as possible to send a print job to another computer and connected printer. It usually only means that both computers have to run the same software to share the printer.

Samer recently discovered the software Printer Share which advertises itself as the ultimate no-brainer remote printing solution. One advantage of Printer Share is that the development company provides clients for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The only requirement is an Internet connection on both computers to send the date.

Speaking of which. The company that developed Printer Share mentioned on their website that all data is encrypted before it is send which might make this printer software interesting for smaller businesses with at least two separate offices.

Sharing a printer could not be much easier. Both clients download the Printer Share software from the Internet and install it on their computer. Each has to register an account which will assign a unique username to it. The setup will also create a virtual printer called PrinterShare. If the user wants to print a document remotely he would simply send the document to the virtual printer which in turn asks the user where he wants to print it providing there is more than one remote location that is sharing a printer.

Any printers that are connected to a system can be shared by the system’s owner. This is one mandatory step if the owner wants to share a printer with other users.

The service is offered as a paid and free service. The main difference is that a cover page is printed when using the free service which contains advertisement. This is not the case in the paid version which however costs $19.95 per month.

This software might appeal most to users and businesses who print papers on a daily basis. Users who have no need for a printer and print documents once or twice a month could as easily send the documents to the other computer owner per mail or use some other sort of file transfer and initiate the print job that way.

Tags: print server, printer, printer share, printer sharing, remote printing, share printer, virtual printer, web printer

Combine Printer And Scanner Into A Photocopier

Martin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:42:18 +0000

Combining a printer and scanner into a photocopier is probably not suited for people who have to photocopy many documents each day but it can be a valid and great way to quickly make some photocopies when you need some and have no photocopier but a scanner and printer at hand.

Photocopier (via Inspect My Gadget) is a name of a free software program that can emulate a photocopier by utilizing a connected printer and scanner. The process itself has been designed to be as uncomplicated as possible. At best the only requirement is to put the paper into the scanner and press the copy button to start the photocopying process.

If everything goes as planned the printer should print out a copy of the document that has been put into the scanner. The Photocopier software program runs on all Windows operating systems starting with Windows 95 including Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The only other requirements are a printer that is connected to the system and a scanner that supports Twain. A few other settings are available. The user can pick the number of copies that should be made, the brightness of the scan, the scanning mode and basic scaling.

Tags: copier software, photo copier, photo copier software, photo copying, photocopier, printer, scanner

Color Laser Printers and Tracking Dots

Martin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:49:00 +0000

Did you know that a lot of newer color laser printers create yellow tracking dots on their output which can be used to identify the printer and probably even the person that printed the document ? It’s not a fictional scenario and the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, started creating a list of color laser printers that do and do no create the tracking dots.

It’s interesting that they state that the cannot be sure that the printers that did not create the tracking dots are not using another way to add a tracking code to the printed documents. The printer manufacturers apparently gave in to the demands of the US Government in a “purported effort to identify counterfeiters”.

Currently there is not enough information to validate a tracking dot with a 100% certainty unless the manufacturer himself stated that the printer would indeed make use of it. The EFF has been using three sources of information to compile the list:

We looked at printer output under a blue light and/or a computer microscope; we consulted press reports about printers (e.g. at Druckerchannel); we relied on printer manuals and other manufacturer statements.

The two companies that have a completely green – meaning no yellow dots to be seen – listing are Okidata and Samsung. As the EFF states this does not necessarily mean that they do not use another method to add the information to the printouts but as of know nothing of this kind could be spotted.

Tags: color laser printers, eff, laser printers, printer, privacy, tracking dots

HP Smart Web Printing

Martin — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:35:02 +0000

Websites can be scrolled to print an area that is not totally visible on the screen. The snippets can be copied or added as clips to the Clip Book from where they can be printed and edited. What really surprised me was the fact that the contents of the clip book are available both in Internet Explorer and Firefox which means it is not problematic to switch browsers.

HP Smart Web Printing (thanks Archer for the tip) adds a button to Internet Explorer and Firefox after installation. This button was immediately accessible in Internet Explorer. It is added to the Navigation Toolbar in Firefox which is disabled on my system by default. I had to enable the toolbar and drag and drop the button to another toolbar in Firefox to be able to access it.

Clips can be selected by pressing the HP Smart Select button and the sidebar that displays all created clips can be opened with the shortcut SHIFT CTRL K or by selecting the menu of the button.

The HP Smart Web Printing application integrates itself nicely into both browsers and provides a very interesting feature to be able to print exactly the area of the screen that should be printed. Definitely a must have for users who print regularly.

Tags: firefox, hp, HP Smart Web Printing, internet-explorer, printer, printing

Create Printer Profiles

Martin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:52:30 +0000

My parents are using their HP printer most of the time to print text documents but every now and then they also use it to print a picture they have shot with their digital camera. Their normal printer settings have been optimized heavily so that the ink cartridges last longer. This includes the exclusive use of black for all text documents for instance and a quality setting that uses as little ink as possible without interfering with the quality of the printout.

Their problem was that they always had to change the settings when they wanted to print a picture that they took with the digital camera. Here is what I did so that they did not have to change those settings all the time. You all know that it is possible to add additional printers to your system. What most users do not know is that you can also add the same printer again and configure it with different settings. What I did was I installed the printer again in Windows Vista.

This had the result that I now had two printer profiles. I started by naming them accordingly. One was named Print Text Documents while the other was named Print Photo. Since the profiles are independent of each other it was easy to keep the text document settings of the default printer and optimize the settings of the photo printer to print pictures in best quality.

No magic involved here, sorry. Whenever they want to print a photo they simply use the second profile with the name Print Photo. It’s theoretically possible to create additional profiles if need arises.

Tags: hp, photos, print, printer, printer profiles, windows tips

Epson Software Resetter

Martin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:22:02 +0000

One way to save lots of money is to refill printer cartridges instead of buying new ones. The process itself was rather messy in the past but it has become easier now and there are even shops that refill the ink for you. Some printer cartridges however have a chip build in that prevents that the printer is recognizing the refilled cartridges effectively preventing users from using this low cost method.

The Epson Software Resetter is a tool that can reset the chip on the printer cartridge so that the printer will recognize the cartridge as if it would be a newly bought one. Supported are more than 100 Epson printers of several different printer series like the Epson Stylus Color or Epson Stylus Photo series of printers.

The application runs under every Microsoft operating system except for Windows Vista and pre Windows 95 systems. Several functions beside resetting the chip are available. It is possible to rewrite the chip, freeze or reset the internal link counters, hot swap cartridges, reset the protection counter and use advanced cleaning modes.

A list of supported printers which is updated all the time can be accessed on one of the developers pages.

Oh and by the way. A great online store that is selling Epson printer cartridges for 75% off is 123 Inkjets. You can use the following coupon to take an extra 5% off your purchase, thought that might be interesting to some: SAVE5

Tags: epson, epson printer, Epson Software Resetter, printer, printer cartridges, refill

Change the Print Spooler Directory

Martin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:35:59 +0000

The default Print Spooler directory is located in system32/spool/PRINTERS on the system partition. Changing that directory to another one can have several positive side effects. It could speed up printing if you move it to another hard drive which normally reduces the slow down users experience when printing documents. This is basically the same effect that you experience when moving the Pagefile to another hard drive.

Changing the Print Spooler directory is an easy task. It can be done by changing the default directory in the Windows Registry. Press Windows R, type regedit and hit enter. This loads the Registry editor. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers and change the value of the key DefaultSpoolDirectory from C:\Windows\system32\spool\printers to another directory of your choice.

The setting can be alternatively changed in the Control Panel. Double-Click Printers and Faxes. Click on file, Server Properties and change tot he Advanced tab. Type the path of the new directory in the Spool Folder box.

It is furthermore possible to change the directory for a selected printer instead. To do that click on the key of the specific printer in the Registry (subdirectory of Printers) and check if the value SpoolDirectory exists.

If the value does not exist create it by right-clicking in the right pane and creating a new REG_SZ value. Name it SpoolDirectory. Now double-click that value and add the path that you want to assign to this printer.

Tags: printer, registry tips, spooler, Windows, windows registry, windows tips

Save Ink (and a tree) with Greenprint

Martin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:07:07 +0000

Ink is expensive, I think we can all agree on this fact, yet programs with ink saving technologies are not available widely. Free programs that save ink are even rarer and it is nice to see that a program named Greenprint is now available in a free version which does have reduced functionality and ads.

But what’s so special about Greenprint which I discovered at the Download Squad ? Greenprint gives you options before you start the print job. It displays all pages and determines those that are most likely not needed, this can be for instance pages with just a footer which would be a waste of ink. Besides that users can remove certain elements from pages that do get printed by right-clicking those pages and selecting one of the three available options to remove certain elements on the page.

Elements that can be removed are images, text and the whole page much like a basic version of the Firefox extension Aardvark. The advantage of Greenprint is that it is available in all types of applications because it installs itself as a virtual printer, the disadvantage is that you can’t select single elements on a page and remove only those. It’s all or nothing. Documents can also be saved instead of printed using Greenprint.

Statistics displays how many pages you did not print because of Greenprint and how many money has been saved because of this measure. The companies estimation is that individuals can save $90 per year if they do use Greenprint continuously. The figure seems a bit high because their estimation is that 1400 pages will not be printed because of Greenprint which would mean that a user would not print 4 pages per day. Maybe it’s aimed at companies where this figure becomes more likely.

Tags: greenprint, printer, save ink, software, Windows

Send Print jobs over the Internet

Martin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:13:37 +0000

I do not like printers that much, they always seem to run out of ink, have paper problems or do not react when needed. Setting up a printer in a local area network can be frustrating as well but this could be – thanks to Printer Anywhere – a thing of the past. Printer Anywhere makes it easy to send a print job to another computer that is also running Printer Anywhere.

The benefit is that the software uses the Internet to send it to the other computer which means that no cable or wireless connection to the computer is needed to get the job done. Another benefit is that you can print papers in a different office, city or even country using Printer Anywhere which might be interesting for companies who have offices in different cities and countries.

Your local printers (yes even network printers) will be shown in the application and you can select if you want to share them. It is also possible to encrypt the print job before sending it over the Internet.

A new printer called Printer Anywhere will be added during installation and you can choose all active printers that are connected using the Printer Anywhere software for a print job if you choose to print on that new printer.

If the remote printer is not available right now the print job will land in a queue. Once the printer goes back online the user at the other end has the option to print on the printer it has been send to or on another printer in his network.

[via] Confessions of a Freeware Junkie

Tags: internet printer, printer, windows software

Use your Printer and Scanner as a Copier

Martin — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:37:29 +0000

A copier machine is basically a scanner and printer in one device. The clever folks that coded iCopy thought that it would be equally nice to use two machines – that is a printer and a scanner – to emulate a copier. You can use iCopy to scan a document with your scanner and print it afterwards on your copier, all in one task and hassle free.

I found this nice tip at the One Tip a Day blog who himself got it from Digital Inspirations. The open source software iCopy does not require installation and can be run from any location including USB devices.

Just place a document on your scanner and press a button in iCopy to start the process that prints the document in the end. It’s possible to set a quality level in iCopy as well as a brightness and contrast level for the scanned image. Several copies can be printed one after another as well.

iCopy works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Microsoft Server 2003 with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

Tags: copier, icopy, printer, scanner, turn scanner into copier

Print key to file or printer

Martin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 17:23:05 +0000

If you want to make a screenshot by using the print key on your keyboard you have to paste the copied screen to an image manipulation program like gimp and save it from within that program. Would not it be much easier if pressing the print key would immediatly result in one of the following actions specified by the user: a) copy to clipboard (default behavior) b) sent to printer and print the screenshot and c) automatically save the screenshot on your hard drive.

Purrint is one of those tremendously useful freeware applications that increase productivity. You have to configure it after downloading and unpacking, no installation required, no registry settings and the like. You are free to select a default action when you press the print key, purrint makes it possible to perform more than one of the three mentioned actions. You could for instance opt to save the screenshot to a file and print it at the same time.

Files will be saved either as bmp, jpg, gif or png – you will have to specify a location, the format and the name of the files (a number is added so that nothing gets overwritten). Purring sits in your system tray and can be configured from there. If you want to use it all of the time you will have to move it into your autostart folder.

Tags: print file, print key, printer

gHacks technology news » printer

Eco-Friendly Printer RiTi Suggests Coffee And Tea Instead Of Ink

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