If you MUST print, at least save some ink

One of the things that I struggle with every single day is my nasty habit of printing the press releases that I want to consider for blog posts. At least once a week, I scatter them all over my desk and let stream of consciousness take over to see what sticks. I KNOW that I shouldn't print and at least I opt for double-sided, but that still doesn't help much when it comes to the ink that I am using.

Enter PretonSaver, an ink-saving application that works with your printer to reduce the amount of toner or ink that is actually used when you print.

Preton's founder and CEO, Ori Eizenberg, says his software uses a pixel optimizer to take some of the dots out of the equation. That is, it analyzes the images and text that you're planning to print and then uses the least ink possible to produce that page. It considers all the elements separately, by the way, in order to save the most possible ink while ensuring decent quality for what you ARE printing.

Preton says that the software can help double the yield of your toner or ink cartridge, which means you can save money on them AND ditch fewer of them. I would HOPE that your disposal plan is focused on recycling. In any case, some Preton customers have saved $150,000 to $200,000 per month in consumables using the software, after recouping their initial investment, according to Eizenberg. A typical return on investment (ROI) is seen in six to eight months, he estimates.

One organization that plans to use the software in a broader way after a recent pilot is the Environmental Protection Agency for the State of Illinois. Hal Waggoner, acting CIO for the agency, says he looked at the software as part of a broader mandate to reduce the number of printers that his team is managing. That's because in addition to saving ink, the enterprise version can keep tabs on who is printing and how much. When Waggoner started using the software, he discovered the State of Illinois EPA office fiscal team was using an unusually large amount of paper. After further investigation, he was able to change that workflow by installing second monitors for the team along with Adobe Acrobat so the proofreading that was being done by printing could be turned into an electronic process.

Waggoner reports that printed documents created with Preton don't compromise on quality, at least to the naked eye. "If it is reducing some of the toner that is going on the page and I can't tell the difference, that is pretty cool," he says.

Preton works independently of the printer hardware that you have installed BUT for the time being, it only works with Windows.