Comments on: 5% of printed documents never collected

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:30:57 +0000

To be honest at our place we only find out what’s going on by reading documents left on the printer for weeks by the idiots that rule us!

By: Mike Robins

Mike Robins — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:40:00 +0000

Try the easy way

For text Mark the text (Ctrl.C) >word processor>(Ctrl.V)> Format as you want.

For Pictures/Graphics/websites/ text (that can`t be copied as text) > print button(on keyboard) >use preferred graphic software> Paste> do what you want.

This saves paper and ink and takes less time then waiting for all those unwanted pages.

By: pcernie

pcernie — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:50:57 +0000

‘So here’s a challenge for Mozilla, Microsoft and the other browser makers: find a way to print only the interesting bits of web pages’

You should probably suggest that ‘officially’, Barry, that could be quite a useful feature!

By: Alex Pepper

Alex Pepper — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:55:45 +0000

Does no-one else use the “Print Selection” option?

By: cerebros

cerebros — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:16:50 +0000

Well in my workplace we have two main causes of this.

Firstly, the office-bound staff are working off thin-clients on Citrix. Since we moved in a year ago all the terminals default to a printer on the higher of the two floors we have. Our outsourced IT support still haven’t fixed it so you can imagine the fun that results from having to remember to reset your default printer every morning.

Secondly, those staff who are home based also have to remember to select their local printer as the laptops seem to default to the office based printers when they’re connected to the office network via broadband

By: Daniel Titley

Daniel Titley — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:03:37 +0000

Try http://www.printwhatyoulike.com, it’s a bit fiddly but works fine.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:18:55 +0000

We have a similar system to this on our Canon printers.
It can be a bit annoying at times, but generally feedback has been positive and it has certainly cut down on the amount of documents left around the printers.
it also means that if one printer is busy the user can just go to another printer and swipe in there to print there document.

By: hjlupton

hjlupton — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:02:00 +0000

I think more websites should over a printer friendly link, as the amount of wasted printing from websites otherwise can be more than just a little excessive. Certainly a lot of online shopping websites that i have used offer this option, so it can’t be impossible to implement.

on a different note, the amount of paper waste that goes on in some of the offices around the building i work is frankly scary, i’ve seen the same printed out slide decks etc sitting in the printer tray for 3 days at a time.

I like the fact HP have given the issue some thought, but coming up with an ideal solution isn’t going to be as easy as using a swipe card, as once the person has swiped, there’s nothing stopping them from walking away and forgetting about their print out. maybe as an extension to the idea, you could have it so a print job can’t print until the previous one is removed from the printer tray. if a recycle bin is near the printer at least the paper wouldn’t totallygo to waste, but then even this idea doesn’t stop some impatient numpty coming up to the printer and throwing away someone else’s print out that may have only finished a few seconds before….

By: DavidB

DavidB — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:51:29 +0000

My HP printer’s software gives the option to print any page or pages you want in a document (including emails). Have they now changed this?

It also allows you to print only text that you’ve selected on a web page.

More use of ‘file – print’ and less of the toolbar shortcut which prints everything might let you see these options.

By: Mark Thompson

Mark Thompson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:35:10 +0000

I also get annoyed at the inability to print in a smart way from browsers. Sometimes I end up copying and pasting the text from a web page into Word just so I don’t have to print off all the extraneous junk around the edges and at the bottom.

Darien’s point is also a good one. I had to do precisely this yesterday and I was cursing the inability to do something simple from Outlook such as only print the first page. This is a very bad omission that should have been resolved several versions ago.