This week’s piece on ink jet cartridges struck a chord. It seems that our universal love/hate relationship with the ink jet printer carries some heavy financial baggage. A couple of printing tips from the Gnomeosphere can help ease that pain in the wallet.

Gnomie Joe shares an excellent ink-saving tip:

You may want to pass along a tip to those who use an ink jet printer that the default printing mode can be changed to Draft quality. This significantly lengthens the life of the ink cartridge for those of us who use the printer more for convenience than final high quality output.

You can override the default back to a higher quality when printing a specific document, when necessary.

Gnomie Sally wrote about laser printers:

Laser printers aren’t that expensive. I bought my HP LaserJet 1000 on sale (or with rebate) for $100. The cartridge costs between $62 & $52. I used an earlier HP model when I taught full time. When I retired, I added a color ink jet in order to “get with it.” It was sooo slow I couldn’t stand it. Now I use my laser for almost everything and the ink jet for occasional printing. I think others haven’t made the switch because they overestimate the cost of the printers.

You just know this ink jet dilemma is big when the Old Gray Lady carries an article about the topic. I’m not talking about my mom. I’m talking about the New York Times. Today’s edition carries a marvelous article written by Michelle Slatalla about the trials and tribulations of a three ink jet family. You can read the article at news.com.