Green Computing: Save Ink & Paper with GreenPrint World Edition
Even though we have technologies such as PDF’s, e-mail, and SharePoint sites that make it possible to achieve a paperless office, it seems like there is a never ending stream of printing going on, especially in the office environment. Today we'll introduce you to GreenPrint, an easy and free way to be more eco-friendly and save costs at the same time.
GreenPrint is designed to save printer ink, reduce unwanted pages, help reduce environmental damage, and save you money by catching pages before they go to the printer and optimize them to reduce waste.
Installing GreenPrint
Before installing you will need .Net Framework installed on your PC for GreenPrint to work. If you don’t it will download and install it for you. Most people should already have this installed, but it's good to know that it's a requirement.
You will be prompted to choose the default printer to use with GreenPrint during installation. Your default printer will be change to GreenPrint, which will then use the printer you choose on this step as the default physical printer to pass through.
Using GreenPrint
After everything is set up, GreenPrint runs quietly in the taskbar until ready to print. As a test I went to print out a webpage… note that GreenPrint is the default printer where all documents should be printed to.
GreenPrint will launch and analyze the page or pages you are printing out.
In the main user interface is where we can remove unnecessary images or text. Since this would print on 4 pages total you can choose to view all 4 or view them one at once or different combinations.
It functions very similar to most PDF viewers and gives you tools to remove pages, text, or images that you don't want to print, so you can save paper and ink. (for instance, if you look in this screenshot you'll see that the bottom page is useless and it would make sense to just remove it from printing)
The other feature is to print a document to PDF format which in itself saves a ton of paper and ink as some of the more technically inclined co-workers prefer a digital copy versus printing out 10 copies for every meeting.
With this option you can also leave in the extra pictures and / or text in if you want. Just click on the PDF button next to the Print button at the top. Then just browse to the location to store it.
The results are just as good as using other utilities like PDF Creator or the Microsoft Office 2007 PDF Add-in.
There is a very cool reporting feature that tells you how much money was saved and the positive environmental affects.
Conclusion
GreenPrint is a very cool utility which offers several options for eliminating needless images and text from documents. It is designed to help save paper, ink, and energy which is great for the environment. If that is not enough incentive to use it, then just consider the fact it will save you money as well. GreenPrint works on XP and Vista (32bit only) and there is also a beta version for Mac OSX.
GreenPrint World Edition is free and ad supported, the ads have humanitarian and environmental focus which is pretty cool versus random advertisements. To get ad free you will need to purchase the Home Premium or Enterprise version. The license also allows free email tech support, frequent version updates, and allows commercial use for your business.
Thanks so much for the great review! We really appreciate it
Have been using "Cute" to do exactly the same thing.
This program is good for people who need to be told they are Good and doing nice things, the rest of us can continue saving paper, ink & electricity without using additional computing energy to give us a screen that tells us how good we have been.
GreenPrint gives you a bit more control over printing when you actually need to print. It's very useful for office environments, I think.
Personally I've been using the Microsoft Office 2007 PDF plugin to create PDFs from Office. It's really great.
http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mysticgeek/2007/10/24/save-to-pdf-from-microsoft-office-2007-applications/
Wouldn't it be just as easy to highlight what you want to print and select " selection" on the print screen?
@George: In some cases yes but there are others where this program works better like removing images in the middle of the selection.
Also not all programs come with a print selection option. This program would be helpful with those programs for printing a section.
When my printer died, I decided to see how long I could go without replacing it. Turns out, I still haven't replaced it. Creating PDF files works for most things. In those cases where I just have to have a hard copy, I create the PDF, email it to my mom and she prints it.
This works well since I now only print things that are absolutely necessary. Plus, mom gets to hit me up with any computer problems she is having!
Would this be the same thing a using grab on a mac, or do you have a free download for green print that works with the mac? thanks,
I've been using FinePrint for a while to do something similar. I tried Greenprint but the interface was very slow. Fineprint lets you print multiple pages per sheet, remove graphics and remove entire sheets if they just have one line on them (like the copyright text that always seems to roll onto a separate sheet.)