Ecography is pleased to announce the launch of a store trading in U.S. Dollars, specifically for customers who prefer to purchase in Dollars.  Operating under the brand Money Box Software - software that saves you money. The branding reflects the motivation of customers who buy InkSaver, as was revealed in the results of the October/November poll.

The same argument applies to remanufactured and refilled ink cartridges.  It is true that you can use these to save money, and reduce the environmental impact of your printing.  But, does this mean that you have to compromise on print quality?  The printer manufacturers did not design their cartridges to be refilled.  So a better solution that will provide premium quality prints at lower cost is to use the printer manufacturers cartridges, and InkSaver.  This also has the advantage of allowing you to print different documents on different settings as observed previously.

Of course some of the printer manufacturers have caught on to the environmental and cost saving issues and have produced their own "low yield" print cartridges. They work great for everyday printing, up to the point where you need to produce a high quality document, such as: a photograph; or a certificate, or wedding invitation.  You want top quality output, better than is provided by the cartridge in your printer.  So you can change your cartridges, you will need to align them, print your special documents and then change back - nor forgetting to realign the original cartridges.  But why go to all that hassle?  It's a lot easier, and quicker, with InkSaver.  All you need to do is open the InkSaver Configuration dialog and reset the ink savings.  Or, if you select a speciality paper in your printer dialog, InkSaver will ask you if you want to use it before the job is printed.  You don't need to have multiple sets of cartridges for your printer, and if your printer manufacturer, or retailer, does not offer low yield cartridges InkSaver can still provide you with the benefits that they offer, and at a lower cost than multiple sets of cartridges.

InkSaver is sold with the strap line "Saving you money every time you print".  True it does, but that's only part of the story.  You also get better quality output, as I had first noticed when trying InkSaver for myself.  And, it must be better for the environment.  If you are putting less ink onto paper then you get more pages per ink cartridge, your cartridges last longer and you throw them away less often.  Sending fewer cartridges to landfill or incineration, both of which are bad for the environment.  So InkSaver is good for the environment too!  A powerful message, and one more appropriate for late in the first decade of the 21st century; before, during or after the recession/depression/credit crunch that is affecting us all.  Once the economy bounces back we will still have the environmental issues, they haven't gone away now.  May be that strap line should be "Helping to save the planet every time you print".

It was one of life's eureka moments, one that ultimately led to me setting up Ecography, my first experience of InkSaver.  I wanted to see how well it worked printing something real, rather the InkSaver Sample Page.  I did need to print out some address labels so that I could forward some mail to my daughter at university, I only had one label left and I needed three (OK you can call me lazy, but you wouldn't if you'd seen my handwriting!).  Just black text on white labels.  So I set InkSaver to 50% thinking that was a good place to start, and printed.  The result amazed me.  The labels were perfectly legible.  Not as dark but totally fit for purpose (in fact they made me think that the contrast on the original labels was too stark.  If it was raining and the label had got wet, the ink would be more likely to run).  I was immediately wanted to try more, so I printed a photograph, at a variety of different InkSaver settings, and on plain paper.  Straightaway it was obvious that without InkSaver I got a very dark image and very wet paper, but with InkSaver the image was drier, lighter and there was more detail visible.  Overall, a better quality image.  I was getting better quality output and it was costing me less, so I was sold. To see examples of what I mean look at the Improving Print Quality page.

I was in a hurry yesterday.  I needed to print an urgent document and my black cartridge needed replacing.  So I changed the colour of the text to Gray-80% and it printed fine.  This wasn't an attempt to undermine my copy of InkSaver by reducing my ink consumption by 20%; it was done in full knowledge of how an ink jet printer works.  Grey is a composite colour, it is printed using the 3 colours in the colour cartridge, unlike black that has it's own cartridge.  Grey is not an ink-saved black; in fact using a grey uses more ink, as you have to set down cyan, yellow & magenta.  Not as much as you would need to set down to achieve a black (you can achieve a black using the colour cartridge but it is not a pure black, more of a very, very, dark brown).  Black is a frequently used colour, especially for text documents, so the vast majority of colour printers are provided with a separate black cartridge, some ink jet printers have more than one, and equally some also have light cyan and light magenta to give a wider range of hues for photo printing.  But the lesson here is, you can't save ink by setting your black text to grey, your printer doesn't work like that, but it is a useful; quick workaround.

It's always good to hear from users of previous versions of InkSaver who have seen real benefit from using it.  What's less good is that some of those request, and others positively demand, a free upgrade to the Vista release.  If you wish to carry on benefiting from InkSaver then please look at the reasons why, and reinvest.  Should you need to justify that download a copy of the Ecography Ink Savings Estimator from the "Saving you money" page of our website, and calculate how long it will be before you see a return on your investment (ROI).  We calculated that the ROI is, typically, measured in weeks, rather than months or years.

InkSaver is a low cost software utility that provides end users with benefits in economic, environmental and quality terms.  To enable us to carry on supporting and developing it we do need to achieve a return on our own investment so please if you want to upgrade and carry on receiving the benefits of InkSaver buy a new license from Ecography.

We have continued to receive requests for software on CD, and despite my earlier blog, as we appeared not to be meeting the requirements of a good proportion of the visitors to our site we have decided to take notice of what you want, and are now offering InkSaver 2.0 on CD, through our online shop, please click here to visit our shop.

InkSaver works by manipulating the output from your printer driver between in leaving your application and leaving your computer on it's way to the printer.  There are features within most printer drivers that designed to help save paper, rather than ink, these can be accessed by selecting the Properties button on the print dialog that opens when you send a document to print. They may be hidden on a different tab and therefore not immediately obvious, but you should find the option to print on both sides of the paper and to print multiple pages on a single page.

Printing on both sides of the paper (also known as two-sided or duplex printing) is an option on many laser printers.  While most ink jet printers only print on one side it is possible to print on both sides of the paper, and many printer drivers allow this, it's often referred to as manual duplex because the printer will print (say) the odd-numbered pages first and then you will be prompted to put the pages back in the printer the other side up for the even pages to be printed.  There is likely to be instructions on how to do this available either within the Printer Properties dialog or in the printer Help files or documentation.  InkSaver make a significant difference to duplex printing because you are effectively doubling the amount of ink put on the paper, using InkSaver you can avoid paper saturation and maintain image quality, this is particularly true if you are printing photographs (see InkSaver > Improving Print Quality ).

Printing multiple, logical, pages on a single physical page is usually termed N-Up, where N is the number of logical pages you want to print onto a single page of paper.  It's usually 2, 3 or 4, and can be more.  As the number goes up the size of the page image goes down so it may not be as legible.  This type of facility is offered by the Windows Photo Printing Wizard (up to 35-up!) and in Microsoft PowerPoint for printing presentation handouts.  Using the printer driver facility you can extend it to other documents as well.  This will save you paper, and using InkSaver will save you ink as well.  Both are better for the environment.

You can combine both duplex and N-Up to print a booklet, and some printer drivers offer that facility too.  This lets the printer driver take care of printing the pages in the right order for when you assemble your booklet.

Any paper savings that you make in your printer driver, are in addition to the savings that you can make with InkSaver.

I was editing a graphic for this website the other day, it was a pixel level clean up and I was starring quite intensely at the screen, when my hand slipped and I accidentally removed a whole letter from Ecography.  The thing that I noticed was that for several seconds after I clicked I could still see the letter there, even though I knew I had removed it.  I quickly undid my error, but intrigued by what I had seen I deliberately repeated and undid it on other letters.  In each case my perception was that the letter was still there, several seconds after it had been removed.  Then it occurred to me that it's a similar situation when you print with InkSaver, even though you've used less ink and printed fewer pixels, it doesn't matter.  It's your perception of the image that's important.  The printer manufacturers, and print software authors, strive to provide the best quality image that they can, often working at pixel level.  But in reality the quality of the image is not important, the perception of it is.  That's why you can produce perfectly satisfactory prints using InkSaver that have less of an impact on the environment and cost you less too.

We have had a number of requests for software on CD instead of, or as well as, the download that is provided on the Try & Buy page. We don't, currently, provide software on CD. It's part of the eco thing. Being more environmentally friendly and affordable. By providing software in download form we avoid all that packaging that you would only put in a cupboard, or the loft, and forget about. Or recycle. And, we avoid the carbon footprint of actually having to ship the goods. Of course this means that we also avoid the cost of the packaging and shipping, and that's how we manage to keep InkSaver at such a low price. If the demand continues to be seen we may offer InkSaver on CD or USB Memory stick, but that will be at extra cost, to us, to our customers, and to the planet.

ecography supplies software products that help to make printing more environmentally (and therefore ecologically) friendly at the same time as making it more affordable (and therefore economic) and improving print quality.