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April 16, 2009 11:30 AM PDT

See how GreenPrint can help save paper

by Seth Rosenblatt
  • 5 comments

GreenPrint World scans print jobs before they hit the page to make them as tree-friendly as possible. It creates a print filter, intercepting your print jobs before they reach the spooler and checking them against a list of preset but adjustable criteria. You can have it grab by the number of lines on a page, for example.

In this First Look video, we'll show you how the program can help you prevent wasteful print jobs--and how it could be even better.

October 2, 2008 9:56 AM PDT

PrintWhatYouLike makes any site printer friendly

by Josh Lowensohn
  • 3 comments

There's nothing worse than trying to print a two-page article from the Web and have it print out in a half-inch column across 37 sheets of paper. It happens all the time, and if the site you're on doesn't have a special printer friendly option, your only other method was to use special software, or attempt to save the page as a PDF then print it out later.

A service called PrintWhatYouLike takes all the work out of this, and does you one better by letting you select only the parts of the page you want to print, leaving things like large Flash ads, site menus, and other clutter off of your precious bathroom reading.

To do this you just plug in the page's URL. You then have the options of simply clicking the parts of the page you want, or getting rid of things like the site's background and images. There are also some handy tools to change the text size, along with a font changer in case you're printing something off a page that insists on using undersized, illegible fonts.

The service is completely free and worth bookmarking. Power users will want to make use of the bookmarklet, which lets you print any page you're looking at without having to jump back and forth. Just one click and it brings up the special PrintWhatYouLIke interface.

Related: Extra page killer Green Print

[via Lifehacker]

When you run a URL through PrintWhatYouLike it's simply a matter of picking what you actually want to print from the page. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)
Originally posted at Webware
July 17, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Featured Freeware: GreenPrint World

by Seth Rosenblatt
  • Post a comment

GreenPrint World is a free Windows utility that helps eliminate wasted pages while printing. Installation takes some time since it requires Visual C++ 2005, which is included if necessary. GreenPrint will also put four new programs into your Windows start-up menu, add a browser helper object for Internet Explorer, and add three printers (GreenPrint PDF, GreenPrint MailPDF, and GreenPrint). During installation, GreenPrint will ask you to select a default printer, but the printer can be easily changed later from the GreenPrint interface.

After installation, you can print from any application to GreenPrint, which will automatically remove pages from your printout based on rules like "completely blank pages," "pages with an image only," or "Pages 95 percent blank with less than five lines of text," and then pass along your document to your printer with the unnecessary pages removed. Double-clicking on any page removes it from the print job; double-clicking adds the page back.

The app keeps a running tally of ink and paper saved and greenhouse gas emissions reduced through regular use. It also lets you create PDF files or e-mail PDFs directly with the printer's GreenPrint PDF and GreenPrint MailPDF, respectively.

GreenPrint World is a bit buggy when printing from Excel, but no other major bugs reared their heads. The latest version adds recommendations for buying green products in nine categories, such as paper, ink, software, and technology recycling.

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