Tip #2268 - Printer Safety
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Q:
I've heard you talk about turning off computers every night for safety
and to save electricity, but what about printers? Do those need to be
turned off as well?
A:
It basically 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. So, you can use the same rules for your printer.
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 and then not print for a few hours, turn it off.
The two reasons that
go around this are electricity usage and ink cartridge print heads drying
out. The bigger issue here may be the drying of the print heads, because
printers really don't use that much electricity. The newer ones use even
less, but older printers 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. If you leave
the printer turned on all day when you're not using it, you're just setting
yourself up to have to buy another cartridge much sooner than you would
normally have to. If your print heads dry up, your printing quality will
be poor as well.
Make sure you always
turn your printer off by the On/Off button and not by flipping your power
strip device. When you use the On/Off button, the capping mechanism that
I mentioned above will fully engage and do its job correctly. Otherwise,
it won't and your cartridge will still be at risk for drying out.
~ Erin
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