With the recession still looming over our buying habits, for many households a certain level of austerity has become a feature of day to day life – whether it’s re-using old carrier bags or switching appliances of at the wall rather than leaving them on standby. Unfortunately, all these cost saving decisions could be wiped out when it comes time to replacing your old printer ink cartridges, and therefore it is important that not only are you aware of the most cost effective ways to purchase new ink, but that you know how to get the maximum usage out of your printer ink cartridges.

Did you know that you can alter print quality from within your printer options, for instance? Not all documents will require best quality, and if, for example, you’re printing lots of pages for personal reading, you might consider setting the print quality to “draft.” In the long term this could save you a lot of ink, and prolong considerably the lifespan of your printer.

When your printer ink cartridges are on their last legs you will undoubtedly get a warning light telling you that your ink is low; this doesn’t mean that you need to replace your ink immediately and could even get hundreds of additional printings.

One of the bizarre things about printers is that they will sometimes mix colour ink to create black ink, which could lead your colour printer ink cartridges to run out prematurely; luckily, in your printer options you can select to print grayscale ensuring that your expensive colour ink remains untouched.

When your ink does run out, this doesn’t mean that you’re condemned to shelling out on a brand new cartridge – far from it! And there are plenty of cost-effective solutions out there, such as cartridge refills.