Taming the Printer Beast

A recent article in the New York Times caught Doc's eye and a bit of his funny bone. Penned by Sam Grobart, the article is titled "Dump Your Printer to Escape the Madness." In it, Grobart laments the cost of printing and gives suggestions as to how someone might be able to get by without printing or at least printing less. He starts the article with the line "First, we kill all the printers."

Despite the humorous (and somewhat unrealistic tone) of the article, Grobart does give a few good tips that are applicable to all of us.

One option to cut down on printing is to use PDF files, something Doc has been recommending for a while. PDFs are a good facsimile of the printed document and serve as a great digital archive.

And what about the use of digital signatures? Grobart suggests services like Hello Fax as another way to cut back on paper output.

But if you do have to print, be sure to get the most pages out of your ink cartridges and, as Grobart suggests, consider buying third-party ink replacements (Doc doesn't recommend this unless you're willing to put up with an occasional ink explosion from a cheap cartridge.)

All in all, it's a funny read.