Ways to increase the speed of your printer

You can improve the printing speed of your inkjet printer by following the simple tips listed below.

1. Print Quality

If you are fed up of waiting for your output to inch slowly out of the printer, one easy solution is to change your printer’s output settings. Methods will vary slightly by model, but basically you need to click on the ‘print’ application on any program, and then click into ‘properties’. Select the appropriate tab such as ‘paper/output or ‘main’ and select the draft mode. You can set this permanently through the ‘printers and faxes’ box in Windows XP by following the same steps.

2. Fit more onto a page

If you can stand the smaller output, you can reduce the printing time in half by printing two pages onto a single sheet of paper, both on the same side, not duplexed. This method will vary by model, but try under the ‘layout’ tab if available.

3. Printing from websites

Simple basic text will always print quicker than coloured graphics. The more complex the graphics the slower they will print. If you don’t need to see images from a website, you can set your web browser to load pages without them. The website may offer a ‘printer friendly’ format, so keep an eye out for this. Otherwise there are a couple of ways to change the settings manually. In internet explorer select ‘tools’ and then internet options under the ‘advanced tab’, go to the multimedia section and uncheck the box for ‘show pictures’. In Mozilla Firefox, go under tools and then options, click the connect tab and uncheck the box by ‘load images automatically’. Once you have printed your document you can always change them back.

4. Connectivity

With inkjet printers, you may or may not have a choice of anything other than USB 2.0, which is the fastest USB technology. However, if you have a network ready printer you are able to connect your printer wirelessly or via Ethernet cable. Out of the two, Ethernet will always be faster because of the dedicated link. Distance will always have an impact on your printing speeds with Wi-Fi because of the proximity from the computer to the printer. For the fastest printing time using Wi-Fi always keep your printer as close to the computer as possible.

5. Add memory

Just like your computer, adding RAM to your printer gives it the ability to do things much faster. This is not an option you will find on inkjet printers, however a good number of laser printers allow you to do this. This is not usually a cheap option as adding memory doesn’t come cheap. Check your printer’s owner manual or the manufacturer website to see if your printer has expandable memory.