In-Store Printing: Do You Still Need A Home Printer?

Home printers can be frustrating at the best of times; if they aren’t wasting your time with yet another paper jam, they’re draining your bank account with high-cost ink cartridges and other such consumables.

It’s little wonder, then, that a growing legion of people are choosing to abandon their home printer and get their printing done elsewhere. While it hasn’t quite taken off in the UK in the same way it has in the US, in-store printing is becoming an increasingly popular printing option.

The idea behind in-store printing is simple; you take the files you want printing to a shop, they go off and print said files and you return an hour later to crisp fresh photos and documents. No misprints, no picking bits of paper out of the printer rollers, no splashing out a small fortune on new printer cartridges and paper - just high quality prints.

What’s more, you only actually pay for what you print, rather than having to fork out for a whole new printer cartridge when you only want to print a single page.

It’s easy to see, then, why a lot of people are getting rid of their old home printers in favour of getting their printing done by someone else. But are they being too hasty?

Despite the regular outbursts of anger they are subjected to, home printers serve an important function that a great deal of us would struggle to live without. That might seem like an overly dramatic statement to make but consider what you would do if you didn’t have the facilities to print out a boarding pass at the last minute if you were running late for a flight, or nowhere to print that important proposal for tomorrow.

It’s this ‘on-call’ aspect of home printing that makes a home printer a still-essential piece of equipment. While in-store printing options may be able to offer you good quality prints at a reasonable price, you can’t exactly roll up to a store and demand they print you out a couple of spreadsheets you’ve just put the finishing touches to at 3 in the morning.

That, of course, doesn’t solve the gripes that drive people to get rid of their home printer, but there are some relatively easy to implement solutions that can dramatically drive down the cost of printing at home – as well as giving you the kind of high quality prints you’d expect from a professional in-store printing service.

The first is to double-check you have the right tools for the job. This means matching your printer with the most common kind of print job you carry out. If photos make up the majority of your printing task list, then invest in a photo-printer; while a £30 all-in-one might seem tempting for the cost, the quality you’ll get from a dedicated printer will eventually outweigh any initial cost savings.

You should also consider the way you print. We’ve said it time and again on the Cartridge World blog but ignoring print settings before hitting print is a surefire way to losing yourself cash in the form of misprints. Double and triple-check that everything is in order with a document before hitting print.

And finally, the costly consumables. If you’re still relying on OEM printer cartridges to keep your printer running, consider making the switch to compatible, remanufactured or even refilled cartridges. All of these options are significantly cheaper than solely buying OEM cartridges and the quality is near-equivalent too. You might surprise yourself with how much you save!

For more on ways to save on the cost of printing, take a trip down to your local Cartridge World store or browse our range of ink and toner cartridges online!