Windows: If you want to print a large image off your home printer and be able to reassemble it, it takes some enormous photo editing cut ‘n’ crop patience — or a copy of Easy Poster Printer.
Your home may be set up for wireless internet, streaming and file sharing, but try telling your printer that. If you’re stuck lugging your laptop to a USB connection, a wireless print server may be a worthy purchase.
Dell’s already got something of a position of infamy in the Lifehacker Discount Academy after its router discount turned out to be anything but, so when the company started promoting a photo printer discounted from $219 to $29 yesterday, my suspicions were immediately aroused.
We already knew that many printers waste a lot of ink (and money), but if you’re suspicious that your printer is a repeat offender, PC World rounds up five steps to help you determine whether your printer’s stealing your time and money.
Finding somewhere to fit a printer in the office is often a hassle. Yew-Jin came up with a cheap and effective solution based around the $19.95 Rast bedside table from IKEA.
If you’re serious about avoiding cartel-level prices on ink cartridges, or even refilling services, you can convert a multi-color inkjet printer into a continuous inking model for serious long-term savings.
Windows 7 sports a great new feature that allows you to set default printers based on what network your computer is connected to, perfect for folks who carry laptops from network to network.
Reader Gavan writes in with an interesting tip for using your printer to quickly count documents that might come in handy next time you volunteer to hand out fliers.
Windows only: DOS isn’t the most popular operating system anymore, but you might have a legacy app or two that needs it. WinPrint links modern USB printers and older DOS applications for headache-free printing. You can tweak a host of settings in WinPrint to make sure your DOS print jobs end up arriving at your printer looking like they should. Page margins, default fonts, page orientation, and character conversion settings enable you to finely tweak data sent to the Windows-based printer. WinPrint supports any printer installed on your system, including virtual printers like PDF converters and sending text to Microsoft OneNote. If you’re looking for a way to get old records or obscure data out of an old-timey app and into your current workflow, or just to squeeze a few more years use out of a rock-solid DOS application, WinPrint can prevent you from having to scrap an application over printer incompatibility issues. WinPrint is freeware, Windows only. WinPrint [via Download Squad]
Reader Greg’s biggest timesaver reduces his trips to the office printer with a simple Automator workflow on his Mac. Greg writes: I work in a research lab with a shared printer that takes me around two minutes to walk to and from after printing something (desk, hallway, door, hallway, door, hallway, photocopier, hallway, door, hallway, swipe badge for access to door, hallway… you get the idea). So instead of getting up every time I had to print something, I started queuing what I wanted to print into a file called ‘To Be Printed’ on my hard drive. Then I created a program (in Automator, since I really have no background regarding programing) to grab the documents, print them, then trash them automatically. I put a link right to the program on my dock. Less walking, but also less hassle!
Check out the workflow, pictured above, to make one for yourself. Nice job Greg! You just earned yourself a signed copy of our latest book, Upgrade Your Life.
