The High Cost Of Liv-Ink
What’s the connection between an American teenager, Which? magazine and your office printer?
Ink and cash.
Everyone knows that printer ink is expensive, but did you know there might be a simple way to reduce your printing costs?
Which? ran a neat little experiment where they compared how different fonts eat up ink. In their test, they found that Verdana gobbled the most, while Times New Roman used the least amount of ink. If your default printing font is Arial, you might want to swap right now; you’ll get 27% more pages out of your cartridge if you use Times.
Are you blown away? There’s more! A 14-year old from America reckons that moving from Times New Roman to Garamond could cut ink use down even further. Suvir Mirchandani found his school district could save more than $20,733 / £12,714 a year with this simple change – and governments could save millions more.
(There’s even a company called Ecofont that has a version of Garamond they claim is more efficient still.)
Ultimately, we’ve got to look to the ink manufacturers. There’s no doubt ink is a complex product, but should it be more expensive than Chanel No.5 or Johnnie Walker? No, of course not. But until Big Ink has a change of heart, it’s up to SMEs and home offices to fight the good fight.
So if you want your business to have a healthy bank balance, think about the cost of liv-ink. And remember:
- Use third-party ink
- Use the right font
- Print in draft quality