When I saw this post on Hugg from Greenliving about new software that eliminates wasted pages I yelled YES!! so loudly that the cat ran away. It should be a standard feature on any computer: "I want to see what is going to print, I want to take out the crap I don't care about, and I don't want to waste paper". Unfortunately it is not. Greenprint software lets you see the whole document, easily click on what you want to keep and what you want to disappear, and then prints it. Not only does this save forests; it also saves money on paper, disposal and ink cartridges. If you don't need paper at all, it has a PDF generator so that you can send it straight to your computer without paying for Adobe.
We had a bit of trouble getting started; the download site was very slow, and the free 14 day trial version said my time was up, but an email to support was quickly answered and soon I was up and running. We note that last night the site said "We have found a problem in the latest build that is preventing people from installing GreenPrint, and we are working really hard to fix it, and hope to have it available again later today." so if that note is still up, wait to download the software.
You set Greenprint as your default printer and print; highlight the pages or images you want to delete, and then print to your favourite printer. A few extra seconds, a good look at what you are getting and thats it. It even comes with a little meter to tell you how much paper and ink you have saved to make you feel better.
In this open source era we have almost forgotten about paying for software, and as we said, every printer driver should do this as a matter of course. It is a bit big at 12.9 meg and a bit slow on the printing, but hey, it is version 1.0. Nonetheless at the end of 14 days I suspect I will be shelling out 25 bucks for this. The meter may even indicate that it has paid for itself already. Windows only. ::GreenPrint
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Comments (10)
This is a good feature. I'd also note that this is Windows only. Mac users running OS X have had the ability to print directly to PDF for quite some time. Another thing that I do to save paper when I print is, when possible, print "two up" or "four up" which prints two or four pages on one side of a sheet of paper. Combine that with duplexing, and I get up to 8 pages of info on one sheet of paper. For me, this is still readable.