PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance

* If you’re only going to print a couple of dozen photos, don’t do it yourself as it’s more economical to drop off your memory card or CD at a shop.

* Stick with brand name ink. Yes, it will cost more than the no-name ink, but it will last longer produce better quality photos. To give your prints the professional look, and to increase their life, be sure to also buy premium photo paper. Cheap ink has been known to dry directly on the printer heads which can cause performance problems and damage the heads.

* Replacement cartridges for ink are a good idea to keep on hand IF you make sure they’re in a sealed container or ‘zip-lock’ bag so no air can prematurely dry it up. NEVER open a cartridge box/bag until you are ready to install it in your printer.

* If you’re printing an article from a Web site, look for the ‘Print’ button on the page as it should reduce the amount of graphics and banner advertising around the article itself. If it does not have one, select the text you want to print and paste it into a standard word processor and print from there.

* Try to practice ’selective printing’ – decide what you really need on paper and what you can keep in digital format. If you look through your photos, you’ll probably realize you didn’t need to print them all and might even find some you want to discard. The same can be said of most documents.

* When your printer informs you it’s time to replace the cartridge – you can ignore the warning for a while. You probably have enough ink to last for quite a few prints. When you begin to see the black text fading or the colour just isn’t right in a photo, then change it.

* Before you print a photo, document or page from a Web site, select ‘Print Preview’ from the File tab to see what it will look like when printed so that you can catch mistakes before wasting ink.