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Turning Off Your Printer Today's
electronics are deigned to be safe and economical to operate.
However, leaving devices on 24/7 does eat a substantial amount
of electricity, regardless of the device.
Power adaptors are notorious for using more power than the
device itself. This is especially true of cell phones, for
example.
It comes down to how much you're going to be printing. Most
people usually use their computers off and on all day, so they
leave them on all day and then just turn them off at night to
save some power and also for safety reasons. All-in-One
printers may also be used as a fax, so they need to stay on all
the time regardless
If you're going to be printing off and on all day long, you
might as well just keep the printer on until you're completely
finished. If you're just going to print one item now and then,
and then not print for a few hours, turn it off.
Most printers turn on very rapidly, without long warm up cycles.
The main two reasons to turn your print off are: electricity
usage and ink cartridge print heads drying out. The bigger of
the two issues may be the drying of the print heads, because
inkjet printers really don't use that much electricity. The
newer ones use even less, but older printers (unless a laser
printer) don't really use that much either.
Most ink cartridges have some sort of a capping mechanism
that saves the head from any outside air that may come through
when the printer is turned off. But, if you leave the printer
turned on all the time when not using it, you're just asking for
your cartridges to dry out, and will have to buy another
cartridge that much sooner than normally would be the case. If
your print heads dry up or clog, your printing quality will
suffer also.
Therefore, always make sure you turn your printer off when
not using it. But remember to turn off your printer by the
On/Off button, and not by flipping your power strip or UPS. When
you use the printer's own On/Off switch, the printer will engage
its capping mechanism to prevent cartridge dry-out. Otherwise,
it will freeze in whatever state it was in, and your cartridge
will still be at risk for drying out. |