Are printer and printer ink costs crippling your small business? You might want to take a look at some of these cost-saving tips in the copying room that can help lower expenses and boost the bottom line in your company.

1. Try to ensure that everyone in the company is aware of all the different print settings and abilities. Make sure they know how to reduce font size to fit more text on a paper, how to print double-sided sheets and how to just print pages or selections of pages that are needed instead of an entire document. When color isn’t necessary for the document’s meaning, encourage and demonstrate use of the ‘print color in black and white’ feature found in the print settings. Color ink is more expensive than black ink.

2. Make sure everyone in the office knows how to use the ‘print preview’ command to ensure there are no errors in the document such as spacing or margins that can be easily fixed without wasting a paper copy.

3. Consider investing in a laser printer instead of an inkjet printer. The laserjet is more cost-effective, printing at 1-3 cents per page, whereas the inkjet can cost 4-12 cents per page. You’ll pay more for a Laserjet, but then the savings will add up as your company saves money on every individual piece of paper printed.

4. Printer-friendly versions on web pages are useful options if you’re looking to print directly from the web, so remind your officemates about that. Less ink is used when printing these versions because they have fewer ink-stealing graphics.

5. If using an inkjet printer, take advantage of ink refills at discounted prices and order cheap ink cartridges online from places like 4inkjets.

6. Electronic copies via email should be employed as often as possible instead of printing papers for inter-office use. Rather than printing out a paper draft of a document, use a USB drive to store the file.

Using these tips in your office will probably see slow results at first, but if everyone works together, the cost savings and overall green effect will have a very positive impact.

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A few years ago, I received a Canon Pixma MX310 All-in-One Printer as a graduation present. I’ve used it for a few years now, and would like to share my take on the quality and features of the product and provide some kind of final verdict.

The MX310 handles printing, scanning, copying and faxing. I have used all of the fairly extensively with the exception of the Fax feature. I will talk about each feature individually and then discuss a few other printer considerations.

The print feature on the MX310 is excellent. The installation software was easy to comprehend and I was able to connect the printer and print a few test documents within minutes of opening the box. Printing is reasonably fast and doesn’t seem as prone to jams as other printers on the market. The ink usage is fairly high, unfortunately, and the cartridges cannot be refilled, but replacement ink is modestly priced and can be found online for as little as $22 at a reputable dealer like 4inkjets. For the tech geeks, it prints up to 600×600 dpi in monochrome at 22 pages/minute and 4800×1200 dpi in color at 17 pages/minute.

Copying is also easy. The ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) is reliable and holds up to 30 pages comfortably.. Quality, of course, is great, as would be expected from Canon-branded anything. Professional-quality stills are approximated extremely well by copying photos onto professional-quality photo stock.

Scanning produces similar high-quality results. The scanning feature, however, has always given me cause for an issue. I have always had issues getting the printer to shift to the scan function. Often, I have to press the ’scan’ button several times before the machine moseys into scan mode. Once the documents are scanner, however, the quality is excellent.

I don’t know much about the fax. From what I’ve seen online, opinions vary. People like the 20-number storage capacity, but don’t like how few options it has. Frankly, I would suggest looking elsewhere for reviews about the fax if you really care about its capabilities.

The largest complaint I have with the printer is its awkwardly large size. The printer is gigantic. It takes up half of my desk! I can’t fit my laptop on my desk if the printer is on it. The printer also makes a lot of noise. The cartridge will probably still have around 30-40 pages of printing left in it when the low ink-refill light comes up. It’s not very eco-friendly, and I hope it wasn’t intentional on Canon’s part.

Pros: Produces high-quality products, functions quickly and without jams.

Cons: Ink glutton, can’t refill ink cartridges, large size.

My final rating is 3 stars out of 5. Although the printer has high prodcutivity, I just can’t afford to keep replacing ink at the rate I do, and the large size makes it difficult to fit onto a desk. It is a decent printer, but when I buy my next model, I will definitely look for something less space and ink-consuming.

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