College To Save Money By Switching Email Font

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has come up with an unusual way of saving money: changing their email font. The school expects to use 30% less ink by switching from Arial to Century Gothic. From the article: "Diane Blohowiak is the school's director of computing. She says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one. That could add up to real savings, since the cost of printer ink works out to about $10,000 per gallon. Blohowiak says the decision is part of the school's five-year plan to go green. She tells Wisconsin Public Radio it's great that a change that's eco-friendly also saves money."

Comments

email?

[rwven]

Only if people are printing emails...

Re:email?

[ColdWetDog]

This feels .... so wrong.

Next up - saving electricity by using smaller fonts on the computer screens.

I have a bad feeling about this....

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same question here: I don't get the correlation between email font and saving printing money. I don't think I've ever printed my email as that kind of defeats the purpose. If they print all of there emails, they should have stuck with snail mail. Although I have printed sizeable manuals using the schools printers before, but again, the email font wouldn't have changed anything in my case.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

try working at a financial (or similar) institution where it is required by law to stay compliant for audits, etc.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a perfect world no one would print emails, but having worked at a place that printing emails was a common occurrence this could save real money. Just because something isn't the ideal doesn't mean it can't be better than the current reality.

Re:email?

[Drathos]

I worked in a DoD office a few years ago that was run by a Colonel who had all of his emails printed out in triplicate (one for his office, one for home, and one to file) by his secretary. He never read any of his email on his computer.

Re:email?

[SnarfQuest]

Since it is a smaller, lighter font, you can save a lot of money by not needing such large hard disks to store them.

Re:email?

[RIAAShill]

Next up - saving electricity by using smaller fonts on the computer screens.

...of course that wouldn't work given that smaller fonts would mean fewer dark foreground pixels and more bright background pixels. Switching from white backgrounds to gray backgrounds would be more likely to have any impact (assuming that modern monitors use more electricity when displaying bright images).

What no one seems to have brought up is that while Century Gothic uses less ink than Arial, it also takes up more space (unless the size is reduced). Try it out with some Lorem ipsum text. I found that five paragraphs Arial 12-pt with 1.25" margins on letter paper takes up about 11" vertically. Those same five paragraphs in Century Gothic 12-pt take up 12.75" vertically. That 15% increase in space could easily lead to savings in ink being offset by additional paper waste.

Re:email?

[ColdWetDog]

Thanks for the technical help but ... I really hate it when people take a perfectly weak joke post and then try to make it sensible by adding some bit of erudition or a fact or two. It ruins whatever humorous implications that were originally present, minimal though they be.

In summary let me just say this one thing:

WHOOSH !

Re:email?

[Sancho]

http://3430.online.fr/computing/electricity_power_consumption.html

According to that, the negligible power difference is actually in favor of showing white images on LCDs in most cases. It makes sense that unless the screen dims when showing dark colors (as you see on some TVs), there is extra effort required to change the color from its natural state, light, to dark.

With CRTs, the opposite would be true. Black should require less power than white.

Re:email?

[Grishnakh]

...of course that wouldn't work given that smaller fonts would mean fewer dark foreground pixels and more bright background pixels.

Actually, it will work because it takes more power to display black than white on a computer monitor.

You're probably thinking of CRTs, where the opposite is true, but these days, everyone uses LCDs, and with an LCD, it takes more power to block out the backlight with a pixel.

Of course, the power difference with different fonts is completely negligible.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically it could be either way. It's just a matter of rotating one polarization layer 90 degrees. You're still right though, because normally the pixels are in a relaxed-pass configuration, not in a relaxed-block configuration. On the other hand, modern LCDs with dynamic contrast adjustments will decrease the backlight intensity for darker pictures, which certainly more than cancels out the power consumption of aligning the liquid crystals. OLEDs and plasma screens also use more power to display bright pixels.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not funny people! My boss used to do the same! Only thing is he told me it's a paper trail used to cover his ass in case something goes wrong. And usually things did go wrong. Running Windows was sometimes the cause ...

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if people are printing emails...

And for those who insist on printing emails there are the EcoFonts. "Offers a free font based on Bitstream Vera sans-serif containing little holes and designed to reduce ink consumption when printing." www.ecofont.com

Re:email?

[forkazoo]

...of course that wouldn't work given that smaller fonts would mean fewer dark foreground pixels and more bright background pixels. Switching from white backgrounds to gray backgrounds would be more likely to have any impact (assuming that modern monitors use more electricity when displaying bright images).

LCD's use ever-so-slightly more power for dark than they do for bright. The backlight is always-on, and the LCD goes active to block out that light for dark spots, passive for bright spots. White background with a lowered brightness setting for the backlight would accomplish what you want.

OTOH, OLED's will work the way you assume, with individual lamps for every pixel. Lowest power usage with a mostly black screen. Go old-skool white text on black screen, console style, for best case power usage. Expect most handhelds with OLED's to use dark themes for this reason.

On an E-Ink display, best case will be a very small font, simply because you can fit more of the text on a single screen and have to do fewer refreshes. If you try to "live scroll" an E-Ink line by line like we are used to on a more common monitor, the power from all the refreshes will be far more significant than any power difference of light vs. dark.

AFAIK, CRT's will have fairly intuitive power behavior, like OLED's.

Re:email?

[krnpimpsta]

Those same five paragraphs in Century Gothic 12-pt take up 12.75" vertically. That 15% increase in space could easily lead to savings in ink being offset by additional paper waste.

Ok, sure, we can save the trees, but then we're back to the first problem of using too much ink. Ink doesn't grow on trees you know. Won't somebody think of the squids? ANYBODY?

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you do not work at a school!

Re:email?

[eleuthero]

They will probably save money because paper is significantly cheaper than ink... and if they are printing the emails, it must surely be for record keeping... so recycling / landfill space isn't as much an issue.

Re:email?

[compro01]

it takes more power to block out the backlight with a pixel.

That depends on what type of LCD panel it is. TN (twisted nematic) panels (most common type in cheaper displays) are clear in their off state and darken when voltage is applied, but VA (vertical alignment) panels are the exact opposite.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

In contrast (no pun intended) most LCD screens actually use more power when displaying dark images, as the backlight stays running but the crystals in display are normally open at rest, and close when current is applied (to block the backlight for black). This also means most screen savers these days are actually worse than just showing a white screen.

Re:email?

[Skuld-Chan]

Have you worked at a school? I do, and I run all the labs at a community college. These people are the villains of the forest. I'm not sure how much we spent per year on paper, but the local school district here (have a good friend who is a sys admin there) says they spend over 80k on paper every year - that's like 2 employees at the wages they pay people.

I do know they bring paper here on huge pallets in massive semi trucks driven here by Georgia Pacific - that's usually a sigh that you have a problem.

Needless to say - they print everything! Powerpoint slides, emails, webpages - you name it. I have a lab printer with 1262724 pages on its clock (I copied and pasted that from its status page). I have an open lab that goes through over 100 reams of paper per term (thats 50,000 sheets of paper) and over 15-20 toner cartridges per term, and a term is only 10 weeks.

Re:email?

[PatHMV]

It's not nearly as stupid as it sounds! Years ago, I was an assistant prosecutor. On my first day, somebody told me horror stories about a previous DA. The first lesson you learned was, when the DA told you to dismiss somebody's DUI charge, get the order in writing. The SECOND lesson you learned was, make a copy of that writing and take it home and lock it in your safe. The boss man is ALWAYS in ultimate control of the contents of the office computer system. If he wants to make an e-mail disappear (for all practical purposes, short of a lawsuit and discovery ordered by a judge in a lawsuit), he can. Now, triplicate is a bit much, and I'd be more selective about which e-mails I really need hard copies of, but the idea of printing out the e-mail and taking it home so nobody can accuse you later of having acted on your own? That's just a good idea.

Re:email?

[phoenix321]

Were you a student for a while?

Then you'd know that all good intentions start with printing out everything. "I am a good student, I'm going to print it out and start reading it as soon as err tomorrow"

Re:email?

[FatdogHaiku]

Thanks for the technical help but ... I really hate it when people take a perfectly weak joke post and then try to make it sensible by adding some bit of erudition or a fact or two. It ruins whatever humorous implications that were originally present, minimal though they be. In summary let me just say this one thing: WHOOSH !

But that's part of the beauty of /.!
I once joked about China CHANGING THE EARTH'S ORBIT by having all it's citizens jump off of chairs at the same exact moment... And someone posted the math to show that there was no chance of that happening.
It still brings a tear to my eye to recall the massive whoosh... it was just like the air that would be displaced by 1.4 billion people jumping off chairs at the same moment (**fingers crossed, waiting hopefully**).

Re:email?

[Bigjeff5]

And regardless of the opacity, you're pumping out light at near full power 100% of the time.

I would also imagine the most common type of display would have the largest impact, but that's just me. :)

Re:email?

[Dogbertius]

Since it is a smaller, lighter font, you can save a lot of money by not needing such large hard disks to store them.

Or you can save lots of disk space by OR'ing all the bits in those pesky e-mails with 1, since we all know 1 takes less space than 0 since it's not as wide :D

Re:email?

[afidel]

That's nothing, I have a floor with 6 black and white printers that are less than a year old and have 800k-1M impressions each. There's also a couple color printers on that floor with 350k and 500k impressions (though those are a couple years old).

Re:email?

[Hurricane78]

ALL of that can be done with media on digital data. And it can be done BETTER!

It’n not as stupid as it sounds. It’s ever stupider!

Re:email?

[Foolomon]

And save electricity by not allowing the use of boldface, underline or strikethrough fonts.

Re:email?

[timeOday]

That 15% increase in space could easily lead to savings in ink being offset by additional paper waste.

I have a silly idea which is about to be thoroughly debunked, but here goes...

Maybe it would be better for the environment to put paper and cardboard in landfills? Using solar power to pull carbon from the air, sequestering it as a solid, and burying it - i.e. growing trees, making paper, and throwing it away - seems like the ideal way to replace the carbon pulled from the ground when we drill for oil. Maybe if we buried plant waste and paper properly, it would even turn back into oil in less than millions of years.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a printed hardcopy without a signature any type of proof that the email existed?

Re:email?

[David Horn]

For OLED, the true best case scenario for low power usage is green text on a black background. This is because an OLED isn't a true RGB pixel layout. Instead, it typically runs RRGBB, with the red and blue pixels double sized for apparent longevity reasons.

The green pixel is half the size, so presumably half the power usage.

And I'm perfectly aware I've just pointlessly wasted 5 minutes of my life writing that. APPRECIATE IT, SLASHDOT. :-)

Re:email?

[Skuld-Chan]

Well its a small school in rural Oregon :).

Re:email?

[Skuld-Chan]

I don't think I printed too much stuff. When I left for school I took with an HP Laserjet m/p. When I moved out of Seattle from my lovely corporate job (layoffs are fun!) I gave the printer to my dad who gave it to the church. Still worked with its original toner cartridge ;).

Re:email?

[smapdi_42]

The financial institutions I'm familiar with are designing very aggressive retention policies to delete all electronic and physical emails older than some small nominal value (~90 days) in order to reduce what is available to discovery motions.

Re:email?

[ViralInfection]

dont print, get an ipad

Re:email?

[hazem]

I take it people at the school don't have to pay anything for those prints? If there aren't any charges or quotas, they'll print tremendous amounts and often leave it in the printers.

In the school lab I worked at, we had a quota system where every student was allocated a "free" 500 pages every term. Few used that much, but where a handful that given the chance would burn through cases of paper.

Another option is to bill per page, at least over a certain number of them. Do it through the student accounts office and they have to pay before they can register for the next term.

It's like a mini tragedy of the commons.

Re:email?

[thrawn_aj]

It still brings a tear to my eye to recall the massive whoosh... it was just like the air that would be displaced by 1.4 billion people jumping off chairs at the same moment (**fingers crossed, waiting hopefully**).

bbbut ... Bernoulli's principle .... oh wait!

(Ironically, there's nothing wrong with your latest simile - it would make a rather large whoosh =)

Re:email?

[thrawn_aj]

Social engineering of the best kind - try to change wrong attitudes but not count on it. Instead, make small changes that cause large positive outcomes even if people continue to act like idiots (regularly printing emails for instance). Kudos to UW.

Re:email?

[kgo]

Where I used to work, some people printed out all their emails. They'd print IN COLOR if there were any http addresses in the article, because of course http addresses are blue...

Re:email?

[Bender0x7D1]

From the secret codes hidden on the paper by the printer.

Re:email?

[bill_mcgonigle]

and I trust he was the 'previous DA' because his officemates sent him up the river for corruption and abuse of the legal system?

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually... The typical LCD backlight uses the same amount of power no matter what is shown on the screen. And the LCD screen itself uses more power to make a pixel black and block the light than to leave it open and allow the backlight light to pass.

Of course it's negligible, but just putting that out there.

Re:email?

[owlstead]

I just forward such mails to a safe account. The level of trust of those accounts (e.g. Gmail) is about the same level - if not better - than those within the office.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you have backups. It leaves a trail that some a-horn cannot remove so easily.

Re:email?

[ffflala]

I understand the need to CYA, but was there a reason that you couldn't forward or BCC such emails to a personal account?

Re:email?

[jonadab]

> Only if people are printing emails...

When you get out of computer-geek circles and spend some time among ordinary garden-variety end users, you quickly find out that just about the only people who don't print email are the ones who don't *check* their email. Sometimes they print it first, in order to keep it so they'll have it, and then they delete it from the computer so it won't take up space.

People also print web pages, a good deal more often than they print word processing documents. Frequently they print web pages that they don't even want. And they never EVER use print preview to decide which pages to print. You can wheedle, cajole, beg, threaten, and charge them a quarter a page, but they still won't use print preview. Even when they've been printing the same web page every day for years, and it *always* comes out three pages long, and pages 1 and 3 *always* consist of junk they don't want (headers, footers, ads, ...), they still won't print just page 2, no matter how many times you show them how. (And yes, people really do print the same web page habitually. Usually it's a web pages that sometimes gets changed or updated, but not always.)

Re:email?

[shiftless]

YOU WIN TEH PR1ZE!!!

Re:email?

[alcmaeon]

Well, since Wisconsin apparently in an alternative retro-universe where people print emails rather than just reading them on the screen, we might as well assume that they still use old-style CRT's that form letters by lighting green or amber pixels on an otherwise dark screen.

Re:email?

[SpzToid]

...he told me it's a paper trail used to cover his ass in case something goes wrong.

Maybe you have taken his words out of context, and should reconsider what he was trying to say to you.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Colonel Pointy Hair

Re:email?

[kf6auf]

I edited my display preferences so this slashdot article would appear as white text on a black background, thereby saving the photons inside my monitor for a later time.

Re:email?

[MacWiz]

Only if people are printing emails...

Wait a minute...

The people at the college are re-formatting their e-mail to save ink. Assuming this actually works well enough to make it worth the effort, I bet that's very helpful -- for the people they send it to. Someone is going to spend a lot of time reformatting the incoming e-mail. That labor will cost more than the potential savings in ink.

And ink doesn't cost anywhere near $1,000 a gallon if you buy it by the quart. Of course, those cartridges won't refill themselves, but you could do a dozen of them in 10 minutes.

I think the only real question is why they print so much damn e-mail in the first place. Seems primitive, especially for a college. And pointless. An entire room full of data can fit on an appropriately sized hard drive. And you know there's another room at the other end of this data retention process where somone is shredding the oldest stuff to make room for the new stuff. Or they pay someone to haul it away and destroy it.

Re:email?

[fatalfury]

You might be surprised how many emails get printed. Non-computer savvy people love to print emails. It's such a costly issue that a new signature has been catching on in my office that reads "Please think of the environment before you print this email."

Re:email?

[Arterion]

More than likely, very few printers being used to print emails in serious office environments are color printers. Black and white laster printers don't do the dots. I would supposed this could be useful for the offices that have a personal inkjet printer; most of those are color, and do the dots.

Re:email?

[rwven]

I work at a media company that makes it a habit to delete any emails from the exchange system that are older than 60 days for that very reason. If they delete the stuff, it can't show up in court.

Re:email?

[rwven]

I'm lucky enough to work in an environment where I never have to print anything... I think in the past year I might have printed 2-3 things....if that.

Re:email?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of duplicates in your situation is well understood. The same may not be the case in other professions but, yea, it really is (was) in your case. This also goes for other scenarios for which many of us have run into ourselves. Common sense and a moderate belief in corruption (existing everywhere you go) also helps.

Re:email?

[stuckinphp]

What is wrong with printing emails. Sorry but the world is not full of freaky geeks like us. While computers, email and the "Internet" is common place these days. They aren't common everywhere, as you seem to think.

A builder, although may use a computer for billing his/her customers and what not. Probably doesn't want to bring their desktop to the 'office' to show his buds this sweet deal on a new tool chest he saw online.

A school, government funded. Probably does have a few computers, but one per teacher, one per student? Unlikely. Printing a time table out and putting it on a notice board somewhere is likely to be more effective.

Your idea of this world being a paperless one is very naive.

-------
To be more on topic:
I'm more concerned that they chose Century Gothic over EcoFont

Re:email?

[treeves]

No, I don't think he meant he was wiping his ass with inter-office memos. That's not so comfortable, physically, though it does provide a certain satisfaction.

Heres an idea...

[epdp14]

E-mail should stay on e-lectronic media! Unless there is a genuine purpose to have a printed copy of an email, don't print it. Digital archives are much more cost effective than that overflowing file cabinet anyway.

Re:Heres an idea...

[wjousts]

There are lots of reason why I print e-mails. For example, if I intent to discuss it in a meeting and don't want to lug my laptop with me and fart about with a projector. Also, I personally find it easier to read from a printout for long e-mails especially when I want to highlight parts of it or have it handy while writing another e-mail and especially when we are forced to use the steaming pile of crap that is Lotus Notes as an e-mail client.

Re:Heres an idea...

[rickb928]

"Unless there is a genuine purpose to have a printed copy of an email, don't print it"

Excellent advice. Redundant, and reinforcing the college's solution, but excellent.

Just a quick question, are you a Linux user?

Re:Heres an idea...

[Aqualung812]

Ever hear of a tablet computer? I can't imagine they cost more than a printer, paper, and toner that you would use over the lifetime of the tablet. Wait another month or so and get a iPad and call it done for under $500.

Re:Heres an idea...

[SydShamino]

Honestly, though, your company could save money by having projectors installed in your conference rooms, and by buying you a second monitor. Other than you being lazy =p about carrying your oh-so-heavy laptop around, those two things solve your issues.*

*Sorry, no advice on the Lotus Notes infestation at your office.

Re:Heres an idea...

[phoenix321]

Another reason is incriminating stuff and the fact that IT dept. can make any important email disappear if The Man wants them to.

Want to remove a subordinate NOW?

Order them by email to do something shady, announce severe repercussions if not done so and demand utmost secrecy for that.
Make email disappear by order to the Admin.
Make them responsible for their now uncalled-for misdeeds.

Re:Heres an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its actually much worse than that. I worked for an email archiving company. If the organization is sued, and the opposing attorneys find out that people are printing emails, ALL printed emails have to be discovered and relevant ones made available. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to find and physically examine every email in a University? And if anyone takes emails home, then the discovery has to include the home files/pc of every user.

If you HAVE to print out an email, make sure it is shredded immediately. Paper archives are an enormous legal liability.

Re:Heres an idea...

[wjousts]

Yeah, go tell it to my IT department and they will politely tell you to fuck off. Approved devices only. Also, I don't want to push my tablet computer across a conference table so somebody else can read it. Much easier with a piece of paper. And what if I want to print a copy for everybody? Take 5 tablet PCs?

Re:Heres an idea...

[wjousts]

We have projectors in a couple of conference rooms. Most of the time they are broken, so we have our own projector that we lug around the building when we need it.

The real problem with moving my laptop is that I use a two monitor setup at my desk with my laptop on a dock. Taking it off the dock often makes it throw a wobbly. Putting it back on the dock almost always makes it freak out.

Re:Heres an idea...

[hrvatska]

If you've got a boss that nefarious then paper isn't going to save you. Admin would have to be in on the plot, and if that's the case you've got no proof, paper or no paper. How can you prove the paper came from an email instead of it being something that you created to get the boss in trouble. The best policy is that when your boss tells you to do something shady you say no.

Re:Heres an idea...

[Aqualung812]

Yeah, go tell it to my IT department and they will politely tell you to fuck off. Approved devices only.

Well, then that is an issue with your company wanting to piss money away. You're not the idiot in this case, they are.

Also, I don't want to push my tablet computer across a conference table so somebody else can read it. Much easier with a piece of paper.

There are two types of things I see in meetings: Information that everyone needs to see during the meeting (use a projector), and information that everyone needs to review later (use email). Paper is less effective than either of these, or both combined if needed

And what if I want to print a copy for everybody? Take 5 tablet PCs?

Yes, or more to the point, they should have their own. Email all of them. If your company is this paper-centric, replacing the printers that must be scattered all over the place (and their paper, and their toner, and their repair contracts) with tablets would save money and allow business to move faster (how much time do you waste at the copier?).

Re:Heres an idea...

[phoenix321]

Admin has comply with the Boss'es orders or follow on the way out. They may shake their head but it's you vs. them in effect.

If a dated paper among dozens of other dated papers in a folder is not conclusive enough, then nothing is. But it's a whole lot better than an empty email folder.

And while not following orders appearing to be shady is the best policy, it is not always (read "never") the best option to keep your job, since you usually don't know up-front if the order is shady or simply secret, urgent but legit.

Especially, if YOU are the admin. Imagine having say, two bosses of equal rank, legally able to represent the company and fire you if need be. One of the bosses orders you to disable all accounts of the other boss immediately and secretly, via phone of course. If the order is legit and you ignore it, you're fired. If the order is a hostile takeover and you comply, you're fired. You must make your move within 5 minutes. Any ideas? :)

Re:Heres an idea...

[hazem]

We already have printers, so the marginal cost of printing out a page for a meeting is less than 5 cents. On that page, I can write notes, draw figures, etc. and I don't have to worry about my battery running out.

For the $500 of an iPad, I can print out 10,000 pages, which probably covers all of my meetings for 5 years or more. I doubt the iPad will last that long.

I'm all about electronic storage and using computers where possible. But sometimes a piece of paper is simpler and better.

And how many meetings have you really been in? If everyone's sitting there with iPads, the one thing they won't be doing is paying attention in the meeting - they'll all be checking their email, updating Facebook, or posting on Slashdot.

Not everybody has to, or should, do things they way you do. An iPad works great for you. Congratulations. For many situations, though, it's not the best answer and people should be free to chose the options that work best.

Re:Heres an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

At, say, 5 cents per page, 500$ is about 10000 pages. You'd have to print a lot before your tablet PC would be cheaper...

Re:Heres an idea...

[kgo]

But is a stack of printed paper really any better than just emailing every email to a gmail account with a bcc?

Re:Heres an idea...

[bhtooefr]

Except the paperless office will never be a reality, paper is lighter weight than even the lightest slate tablets, it has infinite battery life, is generally considered stronger for legal purposes, and is harder for the possessor to accidentally destroy or for someone else to intentionally destroy.

Re:Heres an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a PDA.

Re:Heres an idea...

[badkarmadayaccount]

Weird driver issue? I never thought I'd ask this, but are you running windows?

Re:Heres an idea...

[JimFive]

Especially, if YOU are the admin. Imagine having say, two bosses of equal rank, legally able to represent the company and fire you if need be. One of the bosses orders you to disable all accounts of the other boss immediately and secretly, via phone of course. If the order is legit and you ignore it, you're fired. If the order is a hostile takeover and you comply, you're fired. You must make your move within 5 minutes. Any ideas? :)

Account deletions must come from Human Resources on the "Computer Account Change Form (#367)" and must be approved by the account holder's supervisor.
--
JimFive

Re:Heres an idea...

[JimFive]

But is a stack of printed paper really any better than just emailing every email to a gmail account with a bcc?

Well, the stack of paper is neither illegal nor against company policy. Forwarding email to a third party account could be both of those things.
--
JimFive

Another idea

[rschuetzler]

You could also just tell people to stop printing out their emails.

Re:Another idea

[rvw]

You could also just tell people to stop printing out their emails.

Excellent!!! Can you also tell them to stop shouting, killing, being stupid, go to war?

Re:Another idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop shouting!

Re:Another idea

[Alarindris]

War it is!

Re:Another idea

[EvilNTUser]

I tell users they're stupid all the time. Then they start shouting at me and I kill them.

Re:Another idea

[daremonai]

Well, at least you're cutting their energy consumption.

Re:Another idea

[EvilNTUser]

Yes, we should all declare war on pollution.

Re:Another idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but war and stupid don't have the ability to be disabled via Active Directory. "Print..." can be.

Re:Another idea

[Darinbob]

Just stop studying! Less brain power means you need to eat less, saving more food, requiring fewer farms, and an overall win for the environment!

Re:Another idea

[owlstead]

Somebody please mod this AC comment funny.

Re:Another idea

[Fred_A]

Just stop studying! Less brain power means you need to eat less, saving more food, requiring fewer farms, and an overall win for the environment!

I think you're on to something. A lot of recent trends just made sense to me.

Why not laser print?

[Sporkinum]

Who was the genius there that had them using ink jet printers instead of laser? Probably the same genius that thinks this will save them money?

Re:Why not laser print?

[spinkham]

Seriously. If you're printing emails on the school's inkjet printers, your font is probably not the only change you need to make.

Re:Why not laser print?

[alen]

when i did a year of consulting for a US Army agency years ago, it seemed like almost everyone wanted their own personal printer. most people thought they were too good to share a printer with the 50 other people on the floor. so they probably bought inkjets for all the cry babies who wanted their own printer

Re:Why not laser print?

[rolfwind]

This is perhaps where something like an iPad could help go towards paperless... but like in Avatar, where they uplink to the bodies for the first time, the scientist slides what he is interested in off his main computer onto a slate, there needs to be tech that facilitates the exchange of "papers" the same way between devices. Without thinking about it, mucking with file formats or email adresses.

Re:Why not laser print?

[michrech]

It's not as simple as you'd think (though there is no good reason it shouldn't be simple!).

See -- I work in the ITS department in a college. We strongly discourage the individual departments from purchasing inkjet printers, however, because they're "cheap", and since we're facing huge budget reductions, the departments purchase them anyway. They're then upset at the ink costs, which we warned them about. They're even more pissed when they find out we can't obtain parts to fix their cheap pieces of garbage (let alone that, even if parts were available, our time spent fixing such a POS would make it too expensive). It all boils down to short-term thinking. They *never* take into account how long they'd like the printer to work, and it's total cost of operation. They only see the initial bottom-line.

Re:Why not laser print?

[michrech]

It's even worse where I work. Most of the departments *have* workgroup-class laser printers (or huge copy machines with network print capability). Many of the staff just can't be bothered to get off their lazy asses to walk down a hall to their workroom to get their printouts. Yes, it's that simple... :(

Re:Why not laser print?

[larkost]

This is probably very close to the truth. The people in question are probably professors, and the way internal politics works in most Universities (I have worked for 3) the professors have most of the power. Since they all want a personal printer, they all get one, but they are the ones in charge of the budget and there is no way they are going to buy a laser printer when they could buy a cheaper inkjet (since "it is almost free"). Since the ink often comes out of a budget that is not theirs (at least not directly), they don't care about on-going costs (nor were they really going to think about them in the first place).

And the professors in question are often older (this affects both eyesight, and comfort with technology), and they are often getting email that needs to be marked up (notes on scientific papers, reviews of their post-doc's work, etc...), and you find that they get in the habit of printing out everything. There are some who are moving to a mostly-digital workflow, but the tools for this are still specialized or not well known in the community (they are just learning about how to use editing notes in Word).

In most Universities the local IT has no power to change any of these, and has to walk a lot of very fine lines politically (while being underpaid for even the normal job). Central IT often can put out edicts, since people there have the ear of the dean, but localized IT has both the responsibility to enforce these edicts, and none of the power to do so.

Re:Why not laser print?

[ColdWetDog]

... the scientist slides what he is interested in off his main computer onto a slate, there needs to be tech that facilitates the exchange of "papers" the same way between devices

In fact, screw emails entirely. Want that. Want that. Want!

Re:Why not laser print?

[nmb3000]

This is perhaps where something like an iPad could help go towards paperless.

When you consider the reasons people print their email, a trinket like the iPad is going completely the wrong direction. The people I've known that print their email usually do so for a few reasons:

- Easier for them to read on paper than a monitor
- They can easily annotate with corrective marks, shapes, arrows, comments
- Collate and file the message away with other paperwork
- Just don't like using computers for whatever reason and prefer a hard copy

Some of these are doable on a computer, but none are as easy on a computer. It's fairly short-sighted and selfish do immediately disregard everyone that prints email as "stupid" or "just stubborn" (as commenters have done in other threads).

Re:Why not laser print?

[BarryJacobsen]

For text based websites there's instapaper.com - you use a bookmarklet on the website you want to send to the device (it's even easier than del.icio.us - it doesn't ask you any questions, it just does it).

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

At my company, it basically became "Tough, too bad. We're not paying for inkjet ink any more without executive approval."

Re:Why not laser print?

[Andy Dodd]

The thing is, you can now get decent laser printers VERY cheap. (Like my Brother HL-2070N)

Re:Why not laser print?

[Korin43]

The first two would be pretty simple on a table (and add the ability to instantly send someone else a copy).. that is, if you had a tablet with a stylus. I'd like to see someone use their fingers to write notes/annotations on a document. Of course, then you still have the problem that it's around 5x more expensive than just buying your own laser printer ;)

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is laser printers aren't that expensive nowadays - but some use a lot of electricity...

Re:Why not laser print?

[nomadic]

Where does it say they're using inkjet printers?

Re:Why not laser print?

[RollingThunder]

That's where you talk to the corporate health and wellness people. Remind them of the recommendations that everyone get up and walk around periodically during the day, and the omnipresence of personal inkjets means people aren't walking.

Suddenly, all those printers will get yanked by the health fascists. Use evil for good. ;)

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't do that. They took the lasers out of the laser printers for the sharks.

Re:Why not laser print?

[michrech]

Until they hit the $30 mark (or less), it won't matter to these people.

Like I said -- they only see the up-front cost. Trying to make them see that such a printer will cost them *far* more in the long run is like trying to convince Glenn Beck that he's wrong -- about *anything*.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought my HP laserjet 1005 for $49 I have not replaced the toner once, they last forever, and are super cheap to refill

Maybe somebody should clue them in that Walgreens now refills cartridges for cheap... oh and also that Inkjet printers are a thing of the 90's now that color lasers are under 200 bucks.

Re:Why not laser print?

[DragonWriter]

Where does it say they're using inkjet printers?

It references saving ink and the cost of ink.

That means that they are using printers that use ink rather than toner.

Re:Why not laser print?

[spinkham]

Laser printers use toner, not ink. It's quite possible the article writer does not know the difference, but there is one.
Dye sublimation printers also use something commonly referred to as ink, but ink jet printers are much more common.

Re:Why not laser print?

[gnapster]

I print out all my emails on glossy photo paper and file them in an index card box.

Re:Why not laser print?

[compro01]

Possibly the part where they mention ink and how much it costs?

Fun fact : it would be cheaper to print in blood than in HP ink?

Unless their "director of computing" can't tell the difference between ink and toner, which wouldn't surprise me overmuch.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Aqualung812]

It's fairly short-sighted and selfish do immediately disregard everyone that prints email as "stupid" or "just stubborn"

Not really:

- Easier for them to read on paper than a monitor

e-ink display if eye strain is the issue, learn to use zoom if size is the issue.

- They can easily annotate with corrective marks, shapes, arrows, comments

Tablet computer. They can also forward their notes to everyone else without creating more paper.

- Collate and file the message away with other paperwork

In a file folder that you have to thumb though while saying "I'm sure I have that email in here somewhere", rather than a folder system in your email that is accessible anywhere in the world that has a Internet connection?

- Just don't like using computers for whatever reason and prefer a hard copy

Ok, explain how that isn't "stupid" or "just stubborn" considering how much cost is associated with printing, how much harder it is to work with (try doing legal discovery with mounds of paper), how much harder it is to share information, and how much it hurts the environment. I'm not targeting my anger at you per se, I've just had to deal with too many people that want everyone else to spend more time and money working around their antique way of doing business.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the initial capital cost of buying the printers sticks out like a sore thumb on their budgets whereas the cost of maintaining them and supplies is either spread out over time or isn't budgeted.

I used to work with a conversation group that wanted to build a fancy path and observation platform. I refused to support it unless they found funds to cover maintaining them. What is the point of the initial purchase if you are just going to let them rot and get vandalized?

Re:Why not laser print?

[TimothyDavis]

Sporkinum (655143)
spinkham (56603)

Are you two related?

Re:Why not laser print?

[Bigjeff5]

If they are saving money on ink, I imagine they must be using inkjet. I can't imagine they'd be some obscure ink-pour method. Maybe an ink-dip?

Re:Why not laser print?

[nomadic]

Unless their "director of computing" can't tell the difference between ink and toner, which wouldn't surprise me overmuch.

Or, which I assumed, she was giving a simplified, technically wrong but non-misleading statement to the press. Also, I would presume that any large-scale university printing operation would use a hodgepodge of printer types, some of which may include inkjet.

Re:Why not laser print?

[blair1q]

When you "strongly discourage" them, do you show them the total cost-to-own of their impending choice vs. the better one? Or do you just wave your hands?

Because they can't put hand-waving in the price box on a P.O.

Re:Why not laser print?

[afidel]

There's also thermal wax transfer, but all three cost WAY less than the numbers quoted in TFA.

Re:Why not laser print?

[TheThiefMaster]

Or they're using the generic word "ink" meaning "stuff that makes writing on paper".

You know, so the management understand.

Re:Why not laser print?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yeah, it'll be so nice having to travel around the world to deliver that scrap of "paper" to someone, instead of just hitting "send".

Re:Why not laser print?

[michrech]

The answer would be "yes", to both questions. I even have a fancy-schmancy .ppt (it's all these people respond to) that shows the cost of ink vs. toner (all I have to do is fill in the make/model of the inkjet and laser printers), with yields for both. I put it in front of some "mountain" pictures (to help re-enforce the mountain of cash they'll be spending on the inkjet). Hard to put into words. Maybe there was too much info in the slides, but all they could focus on was "But, this one is cheaper right now!".

Re:Why not laser print?

[TheThiefMaster]

My b&w laser was £40. It's a Samsung, so hardly a no-name brand. Surely that's cheap enough?

Especially as it prints first time every time you try to use it, and prints much faster than an inkjet.

Even colour lasers can be had for under £100, but they're slow, you have to pay much more to get a fast colour laser. They also aren't up to printing photos, so if that's your thing you should be using an inkjet anyway. But I doubt a school printer will be used for that, it'll be 99% b&w text.

Re:Why not laser print?

[trentblase]

What you should have done was give everyone their own free printer, but make them supply the ink themselves (giving them the alternative option of printing to the workgroup laser). This scheme would probably pay for itself very quickly.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Quatrerwin]

I am a student at this school and I have never seen anything but laser printers in their offices and computer labs.

Re:Why not laser print?

[iamhassi]

"It references saving ink and the cost of ink."

Also means this might save nothing.

Says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink, then says printer ink is $10,000 per gallon.

Where does it say "We use XXX gallons of ink a (period of time)"?

Example: This is what the article says: "this spoiler results into 30% fuel savings, and fuel is $3 a gallon." Where does it say I even have a car? For all we know they don't have any inkjet printers, article never mentions how much ink they're consuming now.

Very poorly worded article, or a bit of double-talk to make the college sound green and eco-friendly which is very popular right now.

Re:Why not laser print?

[kgo]

Well obviously Lexmark inkjet printers are way cheaper than HP or Xerox lasers... ;-)

Re:Why not laser print?

[Idiomatick]

And laser printers could be given to them all and still save money.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Idiomatick]

Because apple products are cost effective office tools..........

Re:Why not laser print?

[drsmithy]

The answer would be "yes", to both questions. I even have a fancy-schmancy .ppt (it's all these people respond to) that shows the cost of ink vs. toner (all I have to do is fill in the make/model of the inkjet and laser printers), with yields for both. I put it in front of some "mountain" pictures (to help re-enforce the mountain of cash they'll be spending on the inkjet). Hard to put into words. Maybe there was too much info in the slides, but all they could focus on was "But, this one is cheaper right now!".

Out of sheer curiosity - since you've obviously run the numbers - what's the break even point between an inkjet and a laser ? How many pages ?

Re:Why not laser print?

[SendBot]

Call me pedantic, but I get really irked when people hijack a language to confuse the rest of us who know what words actually mean. I'm sure it happens all the time but ink for me will always be that liquid stuff I can use to write on paper, have my INKjet write on paper, or have a squid squirt at me.

I spilled a whole crapload of toner on my pants leg once. It all came off after rubbing it with a dry paper towel and shaking it off a lot. Try *that* with ink.

You know, so the management understand.

True dat. They could take an extra few milliseconds to know the difference, but then their bosses would get as mad as they do for being told nerd-speak.

Re:Why not laser print?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Until they hit the $30 mark (or less), it won't matter to these people.

You're working in a broken system. Somebody needs to take away their purchasing authority because they fail at basic economics.

Like I said -- they only see the up-front cost. Trying to make them see that such a printer will cost them *far* more in the long run is like trying to convince Glenn Beck that he's wrong -- about *anything*.

Wrong forum for sophomoric political humor. He spends probably an hour a week on the air talking about how wrong he was for years in many regards.

Re:Why not laser print?

[Anonymous Coward]

e-ink display if eye strain is the issue, learn to use zoom if size is the issue.

Tablet computer. They can also forward their notes to everyone else without creating more paper.

Purchase one of these devices and provide support for every user in your organization.

In a file folder that you have to thumb though while saying "I'm sure I have that email in here somewhere", rather than a folder system in your email that is accessible anywhere in the world that has a Internet connection?

You think that people are bad with technology because they enjoy it that way? They would love to be as great with the quirks of modern software as you are, but they aren't.

Also, you're assuming ubiquitous Internet access, which is not true in most parts of the world.

Re:Why not laser print?

[davygrvy]

Yeah, seriously. I was waiting for someone to mention this. Why aren't inkjets banned?

Re:Why not laser print?

[michrech]

It actually depends on the printers being considered. In general, it's not good for inkjets, especially when you factor in that ink cartridges will just "dry up" while they're sitting in the printer and that most cartridges have "expiration dates" and won't work in the printer, enforced by the print driver itself (though some have "workarounds"). You simply don't have all these issues with laser printers.

As I said -- I have the slides, I just need to plug in the numbers once I find out what printer they're looking at purchasing and can then compare it to the printer supported by ITS that most closely matches the cheap POS the department has selected.

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

... you could stop printing emails?

Ikea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like something Ikea might try

Printing email.

[saintlupus]

Or, you could stop printing out all of your emails.

Oh, who am I kidding. We've still got professors at my school lecturing with transparencies they produced on typewriters. It's going to be years before the entirety of the faculty is willing to handle paperless communication.

--saint

Re:Printing email.

[GasparGMSwordsman]

There will always be times you will need to print an email.

A recent example came up at work recently. We had a design meeting between many people/departments at my work. I had pertinent notes in an email that needed to be at the meeting. The option was to setup a A/V system to display the email then forward copies to everyone, or I could print ten copies and hand them out.

The second option took me less than 10 seconds (including waiting for them to print and walking over to pick them up). During the meeting many of the emails became impromptu notebooks and are now covered with all kinds of additions or alterations to the design. (which was more useful to me to have the notes ON the design instead of on a blank piece of paper.)

On top of being less work, many employees have eye issues and may find it easier to read the paper document in front of them than what is a projected screen (our office manger is an example). Lastly there are many locations that you simply can't setup electronic displays (at a restaurant during a lunch time meeting for example).

Re:Printing email.

[davepermen]

there are always reasons, true. but when people would ONLY print stuff out when it really NEEDS to be on paper (like, if it would be a bad thing to do => only do it as a last option), the real problem would be solved. yes, we would still print stuff. no, it would not nearly be as much. it would not be a major cost, or environmental issue, or anything, anymore.

Re:Printing email.

[rootpoint]

Whenever my manager has a question about an e-mail I sent, she prints it out and brings it into my office. And whenever she wants a change made on the website, she prints out the admin page, writes in the new values, and gives it to me. What she should really do is put the printed copy on a wooden table, take a picture, then e-mail that picture to me!

Re:Printing email.

[IICV]

My wife worked in the lab of an eminent scientist in college. When he was away at conferences, one of her jobs was to print out all of his e-mails (including personal ones), put them in a Fedex box, and ship them to him.

She wasn't the only lab assistant who had to do that, either.

Re:Printing email.

[GasparGMSwordsman]

I agree with most of what you said. The only exception is the "it would not be a major cost". Even if you only NEED to print 10 pages per month for every person, at a University with 10,000 students and faculty, that adds up to 1.2 million pages per year. If you can reduce a per page cost by 10% that is a significant cost savings.

My guess is that the change in email font is only part of a large change across many fronts in order to reduce costs. (A similar change of the default font used in Word and other word processors would have a even greater impact I would assume.)

Re:Printing email.

[Tekfactory]

I had a Economics partner at a firm I used to temp for that was pretty computer savvy, he had weatherbug set to tell him what temperature it was at his beachhouse and how the wind was blowing and if it was good, he'd leave early and go sailing.

He had a laptop, he did presentations at various client sites, but he'd always print his slides to transparencies.

How did this effect me? after about 50 color transparencies, the printer would jam, when the transparencies would start melting in the fuser.

Why did he print transparencies when he had a laptop? because the laptop plus power supply weighed more than the transparencies.

Ah

[moogied]

Ah the idiots of slashdot strike again!

Its a university.. where you *TURN IN* papers. Yes, you can email them, but professors think they are gods of there classrooms and can demand paper copies.

Re:Ah

[quantumplacet]

ah, the real idiots of slashdot who try to attack commenters without even reading the fucking title, much less the summary or article.

Re:Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the idiots of slashdot strike again!

Its a university.. where you *TURN IN* papers. Yes, you can email them, but professors think they are gods of there classrooms and can demand paper copies.

Speaking of idiots on Slashdot...

You were SO CLOSE to the hat trick - all you would have needed is either a loose/lose swap or a "here comes an s" apostrophe. Try harder next time!

Re:Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the idiots of slashdot strike again!

Its a university.. where you *TURN IN* papers. Yes, you can email them, but professors think they are gods of there classrooms and can demand paper copies.

you turn in papers from a word processor, not plain text in email.

Re:Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I would have never guessed that you have to turn in papers at a university. Who knew?
Now if only I could figure out why I'm printing out EMAILS and how that relates a single bit to turning in these paper things you're banging on about.

Re:Ah

[Kielistic]

I'm trying very hard to understand what turning in papers has to do with email fonts. Have you confused your email client as a word processor?

Re:Ah

[Ksevio]

But they didn't mandate that all papers must use the new font, just the font in emails.

Re:Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

it's much faster to add notes/ corrections on a paper than trying to open .doc, .pdf, .odt file formats and try to type in your own annotations. It's the same reason why Kindle is great for reading books, shitty to write notes on ( textbooks).

Re:Ah

[msauve]

Ah the idiots of slashdot strike again!
Its a university.. where you *TURN IN* papers.

Yes, so what?

How does changing the email font have any effect on the amount of ink (or the font) used for creating papers?

In summary, I agree with your first point, which is proven by your second.

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

I used to accept digital copies. I stopped, for a lot of reasons: unverifiable "I sent it, really, my email must not be working" excuses, file format incompatibilities, people emailing papers during the class sessions that they skipped so that they could finish them, etc.

The physical paper affords a lot of interactions as well - it's easy to gesture over a region of writing, circle it quickly, etc. Most digital versions of those gestures don't work (I could imagine - maybe - some of them working on a pad or tablet, but that's a stretch.) HCI research, trying to identify why an automation effort failed, observed the importance of physical writing in the care of hospital patients noted how much information was stored in the materials. Nurses could identify authors immediately from handwriting; density of writing often cued the dynamics of care; annotations connected writing to clarify the treatment plan, etc.

The biggest reason, however, is that I don't want to have to sit in an office to read and grade dozens of papers. I want to be able to do it on a plane, a train, a bus, on the beach, etc.

Re:Ah

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooosh!!!

Did you RTFA? If you did then read it again because you obviously didn't get it. You do seem kind of dense.

Re:Ah

[TRRosen]

The biggest reason, however, is that I don't want to have to sit in an office to read and grade dozens of papers. I want to be able to do it on a plane, a train, a bus, on the beach, etc.

They have these new devices called laptops. Check them out. There those funny looking things your students bring to class.

Re:Ah

[vishbar]

I'd think it would also be easier to carry around a small netbook than a huge stack of papers on a bus or plane.

Re:Ah

[MistrBlank]

If he demanded pdf formats too, he could even read them on a kindle or ipad.

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

The beach has this thing called the sun. It's in this big room called the "outside world." The sun is a big fire disk that makes it hard to see laptop screens, but is otherwise nice to sit under. You should check it out.

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

You would be wrong. I can take out one or two papers, and comfortably read them while the rest are still in my bag. I can hold a drink in the other hand (and with the way that writing skills are going, that drink is a necessity) without worrying about spilling it. I don't have to worry about batteries.

Really, I know what I'm talking about here. I used to accept digital copies, but once you go back to paper, you realize what you were missing.

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

An e-Ink based solution might work at some point, when I can do notation easily enough. We're probably about a year or two away from an acceptable model for me. iPad = active display = too expensive/vulnerable = non-starter.

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

I find your ideas intriguing, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Ah

[Idiomatick]

A proper submission protol will show whether or not a file was recieved. File format is easy to fix; Require a certain file format, I fail to see a problem on the last one.

Also, all your points on hospitals are void. You give an opinion but studies show otherwise. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2009/01_26_09.html

Last one I agree with but I think you'd be greatly helped out by a good e-ink type tablet with stylus. The tech is there or getting there depending on how fussy you are.

Re:Ah

[drsmithy]

I'd think it would also be easier to carry around a small netbook than a huge stack of papers on a bus or plane.

Of course, you'd have to weigh that against spending hours squinting at a tiny screen...

Re:Ah

[moonbender]

I had a translation course where the prof accepted -- encouraged, in fact -- digital copies (PDF, DOC) and then returned the marked printouts during the next session. The only problem he seemed to have was that people didn't follow the instruction to name their files sensibly. Obviously this doesn't help save the environment, it's just more convenient for everybody, you don't have to go to uni just to hand in a paper etc.

Re:Ah

[owlstead]

(Wait a bit) and try an eBook that supports annotations using a touch screen & stylus - e.g. an iRex one. You can bring *every* paper anyone has made with you instead, and be able to read comfortably as well. What I cannot understand is how you can accept only paper copies. Are there contributions so uninteresting that you don't want to store or index them somewhere?

Re:Ah

[Lemmy Caution]

I'm waiting for a color e-Ink, essentially.

When I get a good paper, I just email the student and say, "that was good, can you send me a digital copy?" And it happens often enough to make me happy.

Save more by not printing emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would someone be using ink for email. People still print emails?!?!

from a professor

[commodoresloat]

professors think they are gods of there classrooms and can demand paper copies.

We also think we can demand proper spelling. Now bow before me!

Re:from a professor

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a program that lets me physically markup an online document as it is to use a pen on paper and take it wherever I am and you'll save people from printing out documents.

Re:from a professor

[andrea.sartori]

you mean, like google docs and a netbook?

Re:from a professor

[Anonymous Coward]

um... you mean the "Review" tab in the MS Office ribbon?

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA012185621033.aspx

my office uses this feature for internal review of documents before we deliver them to the client. You can track changes, add comments, and a whole lot more. I'm typically not a fan of Microsoft, but when forced to use it, I take full advantage of its tools.

Re:from a professor

[TheRaven64]

The built-in PDF reader on my iLiad lets me do that. The device has a built-in Wacom tablet and you can use it to write on a any PDF. It weighs a lot less than a stack of papers too. I've left academia now, but I used it to annotate papers quite a lot while I was a PhD student.

Re:from a professor

[Anonymous Coward]

Best reply i've read today

Re:from a professor

[Bigjeff5]

Have you tried Microsoft Word or Open Office in the last decade or so? Do you have a laptop? A lot of schools even give students laptops as part of their school gear. A capable laptop with OO.org, Google Docs, or MS Office can be had by a student for about the price of one schoolbook. It won't be a screamer, but a couple hundred bucks is all you need and you can mark up documents on the fly. You can even collaborate with others on the same document without having to continually print out new copies.

This shit has been around a long friggin time. Please step into at least the 20'th century, you're embarrassing yourself.

Re:from a professor

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your pedantry and raise you another....

Technically, they spelled there correctly.

Re:from a professor

[pdabbadabba]

Have you ever used a pen and paper?

Re:from a professor

[paxcoder]

i hope you're not really a professor - even if you were kidding.

Re:from a professor

[commodoresloat]

hahaha stupid homophones.

No, I don't mean sidekicks.

Re:from a professor

[commodoresloat]

why?

Re:from a professor

[andrea.sartori]

not for "phisically marking up an online document".

Re:from a professor

[andrea.sartori]

sorry: "physically".

Re:from a professor

[pdabbadabba]

Aah. I see what you did there.

Printer Ink?

[TheRaven64]

Sounds like buying a couple of laser printers would save them more money. I wonder how much money they waste on email storage and bandwidth costs by sending HTML mail instead of plain text too.

Re:Printer Ink?

[ejtttje]

I wonder how much money they waste on email storage and bandwidth costs by sending HTML mail instead of plain text too.

Haha haha ha haaa... wait, were you serious?
You know if people can't apply some simple formatting in the email reliably, they're just going to attach Word .docs (even more than they do already >:(). How much space do you think that will waste. Go back to using gopher if you don't like the web, same idea.

Re:Printer Ink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of sending HTML? You sound like the people who save $.0001 by driving in the twilight with only their parking lights on while risking a $20,000 accident.

Re:printer ink?

[HikingStick]

Not when compared net to ink.

disclaimer: in the industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, train your students that printing up emails is stupid.

Secondly of all, give the students access to community laser printers. We're talking about pennies per page versus small fractions of pennies per page to print (i.e. 10 cents versus 0.001 cents)

Thirdly, switch over to re manufactured inks and toners. If the students are aware that they can buy aftermarket inks and toners, there's another 50% savings off the top (AND it's "green"). There are good companies and there are bad companies. Find someone local. Its supports the nearby economy. If you have problems, you don't have to ship something back to China.

[disclaimer: I work in the reman industry. I'm biased. Lasers tend to be more reliable than reman'd inks. With lasers, you can disassemble everything and replace the parts. With inkjets, it's more like an artform. If the electronics fail (which they often do), the cart is SOL]

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[Yamata no Orochi]

Remanufactured toner cartridges are mostly garbage as well. Not sure what you're on about.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[Anonymous Coward]

It's on topic, so I'll continue for a bit.

There are two ways to remanufacture the average laser.

1. The cheapest way: Drill and Fill. A company takes an empty laser cartridge and either splits it in half with a saw or drills a hole in it. They pour in toner, seal up the hole, and sell the cartridge. This produces a low cost, crappy cartridge. These will fail mid-stream, produce crap output, and possibly will leak.

2. The proper way: Disassemble, clean, re manufacture, reassemble, test. Most cartridges can be taken apart. Once apart, a tech can clean the entire cartridge. They can get rid of any old toner which is in the empty shell. Gears can be cleaned. Electrical connections can be primed with conductive material. Rollers can be replaced. Blades can be serviced. Chips can be replaced. The tech can reassemble the cartridge and test it. One can make a cartridge which performs just like an original. Parts are rated based on a certain amount of pages. When the proper parts are replaced, the cartridge will last as long as it is supposed to.

Don't get me wrong. It's manufacturing. It's hard. Just like with any manufacturing, there is a failure rate. But, trust me, with the majority of lasers and inks, one can produce an after market product which matches the OEM.

But in the same regard, someone can do a shit job on a cart and ruin your printer.

Make sure that if you go local, that they have some form of guarantee, and will go out of their way to fix your machine if something goes wrong (cleaning, replacing, etc). Most respectable remaners will do so.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[larkost]

Student printing largely pays for itself through the printing fees charged to the students. I am sure the UWGB is advocating to their students to make the font change, but that is largely a secondary issue. What they are probably talking about here is printing done by faculty and staff, where the local IT department picks up the cost of ink/toner.

And I think your measurement of the cost for lasers is a couple of orders of magnitude off. It is still much cheaper than ink-jet, but not that much cheaper.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[tepples]

Secondly of all, give the students access to community laser printers.

In the early to mid 2000s, the community laser printers were black and white.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[zill]

Just curious, how much does one of your re-manufactured cartridges cost?

I was looking for a toner cartridge recently (MLT-D108S specifically) and found out that the re-manufacturing service in my city were simply too expensive compared new cartridge. The cheapest quote I got was $60, which is significantly more than the $45 price of a brand new cartridge on eBay. Not to mentioned I would have spend the time to take two trips to the store versus waiting for the cartridge to arrive at my doorsteps.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[Dragee]

I'm inclined to doubt that the students are the ones printing most of their emails. In my experience, it's usually the older generation(s) that seem to want to print everything, so it's probably faculty/professors printing out every damn thing. I have two theories on this:

1) Younger people are still more used to digesting content directly from an electronic screen, so they don't feel a need to convert it to dead-tree form for a more "natural" medium.

2) Younger people are probably more likely to trust that the email will still be there*, and they are able to use search tools to find it, whereas older generations may feel (even subconsciously) that if they don't print it out and put it in their hard-copy filing system, they may not have access to it again. I think the only reason my mother has cut down on her printing of every "interesting" email is that she has spammed herself into oblivion with mailing lists & such, to the point that printing everything would be cost prohibitive.

*Assuming there's not a ridiculous "all email will be deleted within 90 days, and no archiving or auto-forwarding allowed" policy, like with my employer.

Re:disclaimer: in the industry

[Quatrerwin]

Mod parent up. As a student at UWGB, I know many students do see if they can just email their papers to the professors to save money. The professors, I believe, do not have to pay for printing, whereas the students have to pay $0.07 per B&W page, $0.30 cents per color page, and $0.60 cents per color tabloid page. If we can save $1 here and there just by sending papers to the professors, who will print it off to grade it, we will.

Not a bad idea...

[eeg3]

...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.

Re:Not a bad idea...

[beakerMeep]

Depends on your idea of 'better'. As a decorative header/ display/ advertising font, some could say it looks much nicer. However, as just a standard reading font it is very wide and hard to read. They will probably end up using more paper and reducing readability.

Re:Not a bad idea...

[punit_r]

...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.

Thanks for the comparison. Now there is a new problem. The new font uses more space and hence resulting in more wastage of paper! Although there might be a valid argument saying 30% saving of ink is more desirable as compared to 1 extra line every 8 lines.

All of this even if we ignore the fact that people print so many emails that a change of font is going to result in tangible savings. The article mentions the cost of ink per gallon. It would have been interesting to know the total ink consumption in gallons irrespective of the matter printed.

As per my personal experience as a grad student. I have printed only 5-10 emails in many years as compared to many many technical papers.

Re:Not a bad idea...

[ClickOnThis]

...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.

Uh...the link displays a 1x1-pixel png, and what's more, I think it's white. So they certainly would save ink using a font like this.

(Did something just go "whoosh" over my head?)

Re:Not a bad idea...

[MaximumFrost]

I'm actually glad it fills up more space on the page, because it means I can write short papers again instead of having to drone on and on (or repeat myself) in the text to meet the length requirement after I met the requirements for the paper itself 4 pages ago.

Re:Not a bad idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs wider and is less legible. Have they included the increase in paper cost in their calculations?

Re:Not a bad idea...

[frank_adrian314159]

Not that that's saying much - almost anything (sans Comic Sans) looks better than Arial.

And that being said, I would probably have started by looking at a serif'ed font. Serif'ed fonts are much more legible, especially in large blocks, than sans serif fonts. Having a lighter-faced font would also make legibility a bit more difficult (in the case of the chosen font, this is ameliorated by widening the characters). I would have gone with a light, condensed font like ITC Cheltenham Condensed Light, or ITC Legacy Serif Light Condensed. Or, if I wanted a really retro look with lots of ink savings, something like ITC American Typewriter Light Condensed. Any of the serif'ed fonts are much more legible and, frankly, look classier than any of the "Helvetica redux" sans serif fonts, popular with the computer set these days.

.sig files...

[CohibaVancouver]

Another approach would be to ban ridiculous gigantic .sig files, complete with name, email address, snail-mail, address, three phone numbers, URL, twitter link, facebook link, linkedin link, blog link, some kind of logo and a giant block of text mandated by legal. Oh yeah, and coded in HTML so it matches corporate colours. Ugh.

Sometimes I get emails where the sig is longer than the body of the freakin' email.

Re:.sig files...

[Ksevio]

Don't forget the slew of meaningless titles for various committees or for students, clubs that many people feel it necessary to tell me for each email sent.

Re:.sig files...

[beakerMeep]

Agreed

=========
Beaker Meep Esq
Vice President of Product Testing and Evanglising Evanagalist
Honey Doo Industries L.L.C
1 Muppet Lane
Hensonville, USA 31337
Beaker@HoneyDooIndustriesLLC.com
http://www.honeydooindustriesllc.com/
Twitter: @MeepMeepMeep
Facebook: IHateHoneyDooMeep
Tumblr: MeepMeepMeepMeeepMeep.meep
MySpace:MeepItLikeYoMotherMadeYa
Friendster: Meep
Orkut: MeepMeep

All text available from this post is copyright protected © 2000-2010 by Beaker the Muppet Meep. Unless stated otherwise, all text is provided free of charge. All text is provided on an "as is" basis without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Under no circumstances and under no legal theory, whether in tort, contract, or otherwise, shall Beaker the Muppet Meep, or Bunsen Honeydoo be liable to you or to any other person for any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character including, without limitation, damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or for any and all other damages or losses. If you do not agree with these terms, then you are advised not to read.

Please consider the environment before reading all this drivel.

Re:.sig files...

[commodore64_love]

Another approach would be to ban
  ridiculous gigantic .sig files, complete with
  name, email address, snail-mail, address,
  three phone numbers, URL, twitter link,
  facebook link, linkedin link, blog link,
  some kind of logo and a giant block of text
  mandated by legal. Oh yeah, and coded in
  HTML so it matches corporate colours. Ugh.

    Sometimes I get emails where the sig is longer than the body of the freakin' email.

Yes.
You're right.
It's also annoying when people quote without trimming. ;-)

- c64_love

    Fred Haddad - via
    FidoNet node 1:270/411
    UUCP: ...!eds1!devon
    !rhutch!Fred.Haddad
    Fred.Haddad
    @rhutch.FIDONET.ORG
.. . __
. . /// NOW PLAYING:
__ /// CD quality music
\\/// Over 1 million colors
.\X/ "Only Amiga makes it possible!"

(Yes these are my actual sigs from the 1980s, when I was young and stupid and made them ridiculously long.)

Re:.sig files...

[c 0xFF]

Yeah, I really hate that, too.

--
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3a
Charset: noconv

iQCVAwUBMXVGMFIa2NdXHZJZAQFe4AQAz0FZrHdH8o+zkIvcI/4ABg4gfE7cG0xE
Z2J9GVWD2zi4tG+s1+IWEY6Ae17kx925JKrzF4Ti2upAwTN2Pnb/x0G8WJQVKQzP
mZcD+XNnAaYCqFz8iIuAFVLchYeWj1Pqxxq0weGCtjQIrpzrmGxV7xXzK0jus+6V
rML3TxQSwdA=
=T9Mc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re:.sig files...

[Just Some Guy]

Oh yeah, and coded in HTML so it matches corporate colours.

Does it take more ink to print text that's been formatted in HTML?

Re:.sig files...

[MrCrassic]

P please consider the environment before printing this post.

Re:.sig files...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I get emails where the sig is longer than the body of the freakin' email.

Only sometimes? Can I have your job?

Re:.sig files...

[c 0xFF]

Of course. Examples from personal experience:

1) Pictures (come on! who needs pictures in a sig?)
2) Font style and size ... and bold text
3) Color

Color doesn't directly mean more ink, but it still costs more money to print (color being more expensive than B&W).

Re:.sig files...

[eulernet]

Another huge saving can be done by simply keeping only the last reply.

I have mails where the whole discussion goes on and on, with nobody removing all the old comments.

Re:.sig files...

[pdabbadabba]

Another approach would be to ban ridiculous gigantic .sig files, complete with...a giant block of text mandated by legal.

The problem with getting rid of things mandated by legal is that they're mandated. By legal. :(

Re:.sig files...

[moonbender]

I gotta say the Amiga one makes for a really cool signature, today.

Re:.sig files...

[CronoCloud]

Unless Beaker is Brazilian, he wouldn't use orkut. :-)

Re:.sig files...

[CronoCloud]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Come on, everybody should be inline GnuPG signing their Slashdot posts, the obsessive cypherpunks demand it.

<a href="Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimbal in the
wabe..."> (That lets me bypass the lameness filter and post an actual gnupg
signed message to make the joke work!)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkutUC4ACgkQnludVzJNqF2d4QCght3TZm4rkmMpqoES8jp9sgbO
+joAn0sxLDcKAIzq0Qkev42ZHm564ncZ
=SX7U
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Why not use Ecofont?

[commodore64_love]

It has "holes" in the letters to save ink. So instead of 30% less ink usage this college would have about 45% less ink usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofont

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[andrea.sartori]

why not NOT printing everything? it saves up to 100% ink. or toner at that.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Let's hope they're using a really small font size. Cause those holes are really distracting in the Wikipedia example. The main advantage to reading from paper is faster reading speed (and arguably, less eyestrain), but if you're constantly distracted by the weird font, you'll lose that. Of course, using a small font size in the first place would save more ink (and more paper, due to more words per page) than a gimmicky font.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just print in gray instead of black?

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In order to optimise the legibility of the printed text, we have set an Ecoprint range. Only text up to a particular point size – generally 11 points - is printed in the Ecofont font. Larger text is printed in the normal font."

Seems the examples are just maginified to prove the concept

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Cause those holes are really distracting in the Wikipedia example

Only because they are on a screen. When printed the Ecofont's holes disappear due to the way ink "flows" into the paper.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[thenonoman]

I was going to suggest this. The example in wikipedia may be distracting, but then if you are printing your email in a 72pt font, you have issues anyways. I have used ecofont, and at the 12pt, you can not see the holes.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a good posting explaining why Ecofont doesn't offer any advantage over a light serif on Fontblog (only in German, here's an English summary). Fontblog is written by typography professionaly and can be trusted on these things.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[dniesen]

Because they would actually need to install this font/software. They can easily switch fonts and assume that everybody has Century Gothic as it's already widely installed. The additional IT overhead probably don't justify the impact on savings.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Ecofont's site their software causes their font to kick in only at the smaller point sizes (ie. 11pt and under)

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

or turn on the "draft" feature of your printer. It will look almost the same (grey instead of black text)

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound almost like the economode that my 10 year old $20 HP laserjet has.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[frank_adrian314159]

Why not use it?

First, it's ugly. I mean really, helvetic'ish ugly. Second, the holes haven't been designed well - there's a high variability in color tone between the characters that gives an astigmatic dazzle effect and that make the text very fatiguing to read. Third, it doesn't scale well - magnifying by 20% increases the visibility of these flaws.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. They could pay for Ecofont Software and use whatever fonts they want... or if they're content to just change their font they could opt for Ecofont Vera Sans, which is free.

I'm still thinking somebody should produce a free fixed-width font like this so that my comp sci profs who like to print students' code could save some ink.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[arielCo]

Dithering may produce letters with jagged edges, especially at moderate resolutions - try it.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[adisakp]

It has "holes" in the letters to save ink. So instead of 30% less ink usage this college would have about 45% less ink usage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofont

Big problem though -- reading this font, the holes line up and cause banding which makes it look like the printer is running out of ink or that the printer is broken at a quick glance. Also the banding causes eyestrain... even if they move the holes around randomly (which would be hard to do right), the font is not as easy to read as a filled in font.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll spend more on glasses

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[Idiomatick]

Sort of, with smaller fonts and a not super accurate printer the font doesn't look like that. With that said, the idea of using less darkness is probably way easier.... grayscale fonts.

Re:Why not use Ecofont?

[owlstead]

You can try and do both.

Similar ideas

[crow]

While I agree that printing emails is stupid, the idea of changing defaults to reduce ink and toner usage is rather smart. At my company, they changed the default Powerpoint template to one that would save on printing costs. Again, people shouldn't be printing them out in the first place, but the fact is that they do, and this will save money.

Safe more.

[leuk_he]

It is even very simple to sfe 20% more with a Eco font

Re:Safe more.

[ShadowRangerRIT]

As I noted above, that font is really distracting for the reader. I'd be happier with using slightly smaller font and possibly 80% black density to achieve a similar effect, while using less paper (smaller fonts mean more content per page) and not having the weird choppy contrast those dots create.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to go green...

STOP PRINTING E-MAILS!!!!

ColorQube

[Anonymous Coward]

How about getting rid of the 200 individual inkjets and getting several centralized solid ink Xerox ColorQubes for example. Makes more "cents" if you ask me... might help cure a small percentage of over-weight people by forcing them to walk 5 doors down to pickup their printed pages too :)

Even Simpler Solution...

[pandrijeczko]

...charge the students the same as it costs the college to print each page - then see how much they *DO* actually print.

Use semicolons instead of colons

[krnpimpsta]

That's a good idea, but I think there's more money to be saved where people are using entire colons when semi-colons would suffice.

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/?F=1&CharIDs=&ViewType=Full&NoDateRange=1&SingleDate=08%2F20%2F1996&Order=s.DateStrip&PerPage=5&After=04%2F16%2F1989&Before=03%2F26%2F2010&CharFilter=Any

Re:Use semicolons instead of colons

[ColdWetDog]

I've got a better idea - move all email to Twitter: You only get 140 characters. Period. The only other thing better would be to route all emails to /dev/null but I don't think you can do that on a Windows box.

Re:Use semicolons instead of colons

[c 0xFF]

I've got a better idea - move all email to Twitter: You only get 140 characters. Period. The only other thing better would be to route all e

Error: Slashdot has moved all posts to twitter. Try shortening your post.

Well, idle is pants

[Fizzl]

Google for Arial and Century Gothic. The former is clearl ment for reading, the latter for presentation. Arial is easy to read because it has enough "squiggles" for the brain to distinguish letters at rapid pace. Century gothic looks very nice and I would recommend it any day for BIG Headlines Buy This Car Now - type things, never for something you are supposed to be actually reading for prolonged time.

Then again, who the hell send an email over 50 words these days? So, *shrug*

Re:Well, idle is pants

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people do who need to keep track of a running conversation. Frequently I need to see the course of an email thread months afterwards. Hell, you comment is prob over 50 words long.

Re:Well, idle is pants

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail tracks email conversations just fine.

Save even more

[davidbrit2]

Use 2pt white Arial Narrow, and you'll not only reduce your ink usage by nearly 100%, but you'll save on paper too.

Re:Save even more

[andrea.sartori]

most people would try and print more copies of it just because "there must be something wrong with the printer" and finally file a printer maintenance request to sysadmin. on paper. in triplicate.

If you want to save money on printing...

[Balial]

... just throw out some printers. You'll save electricity and paper bills, too. If your staff are printing that many pages, you've got something wrong.

Re:If you want to save money on printing...

[Macgrrl]

In all seriousness, unless you turn your printer off at night - or even better, only turn it on when you wish to print: the average printer uses >65% of it's power consumtpion out of standard office hours while in standby mode.

I don't have the source to hand, but I spent 6 months modelling this for Xerox some uears ago when I worked for them.

Wait...

[EEBaum]

...email has fonts?

Re:Wait...

[iprefermuffins]

Well, it has at least font.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Printers have fonts. Once you go down the stupid road and decide to print email, you're going to use some font. The part that doesn't make sense if that the TFA says they changed the default font in their "email system" rather than the default font in their printer or printing app.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, even plain text emails have fonts. How else do you read text on a computer?

We've seen this before

[Lord Byron II]

There was a /. a couple of years ago about a company that release "ink saving" fonts that had holes in them - micro-dots in the black area of each letter, designed to be invisible to the naked eye, yet indistinguishable from the regular fonts.

Save even more money...

[rugatero]

They could save even more by changing the font colour to white.

But then some bright spark will suggest they need to order black paper so the white ink will show up, and they'll be out of pocket again.

Dumb & Dumber in Wisconsin

[KJSwartz]

Where to start?

#1: The default font should be pushed into their printers, not email system, and printers protected against unauthorized configuration. Unspecified font types would then save serious money.

#2: Arial is better for numerical formatting. Who does accounting with Century Gothic?

#3: No HTML formatted emails should be allowed through their email filters - ever! This was not the point of the article, but worthy to repeat ad Infinitum.

#4: Others say use Laser, not Inkjet. True! Real easy to justify pawning off most of those costly Color printers for monochromatic B&W, and get cartridges with superior shelf life and faster print times.

Another thought

[carlhaagen]

They could go down a point (or pixel) in font size, too. Something else noteworthy is that most characters in Century Gothic, of same height as same character in Arial, is wider, thus requiring more paper per letter, per word, per sentence - their cost cutting might end up a null result.

Re:Another thought

[gujo-odori]

Paper cost factors in, but paper is far cheaper than printer ink. For the cost of an ink cartridge (more or less) I can buy a whole case of paper, and it takes multiple cartridges to print a case of paper. Even if the font doubled the amount of paper they use (it won't), they'd still be money ahead.

or use lasers and use toner refills

[Anonymous Coward]

... my P1005 cost $39. Cheaper than an inkjet and about 1/5 th the cost per page.

or... use a kodak printer and cut your costs in half instead of 30%. Do both and pay about 1/3 the cost.

or... don't print; make available on mobile platforms (BB, etc) and archive on disk. Cheapest solution yet.

$10,000.00 A GALLON?

[Higaran]

Seriously, WTF? I knew printer ink was a rip off but I didn't think it was that bad, almost make me not so pissed off that that gas was only $3.19 a gallon by my house today.

Re:$10,000.00 A GALLON?

[jayme0227]

almost make me not so pissed off that that gas was only $3.19 a gallon by my house today.

Except most people use gasoline in gallons and printer ink in milliliters. I've definitely not used anywhere near a gallon of ink in my life so far (and would be shocked if I use a gallon of ink during my entire life), whereas I know I've spent over $10,000 in gas.

Re:$10,000.00 A GALLON?

[OrangeCatholic]

>Except most people use gasoline in gallons and printer ink in milliliters.

Doesn't matter. That's about a thousand dollars a pound. Pure silver is only about $270/lb. Copper is $3.40/lb.

Besides, you failed your own comparison. This college does use printer ink by the gallon.

It's the same genius...

[Lead Butthead]

Who was the genius there that had them using ink jet printers instead of laser? Probably the same genius that thinks this will save them money?

It's the same genius that tells employees to save all their electronic documents using smaller fonts to save disk space...

Re:#3

[confused one]

Can I send drawings, images, graphed data or a complex formula (in an easily readable as hand-written format) as part of a text email. I don't think so. I use HTML email specifically because it allows all of the above to be embedded. Otherwise half the email I send would have to contain one or more attachments. So which do you prefer someone send: An attached Excel spreadsheet containing macros or an embedded graph of the data?

or they could

[jim_v2000]

STOP PRINTING EVERY FUCKING THING THAT POPS UP ON THEIR SCREEN. Dear God, I hate this at school where every term each student gets a printed syllabus from every professor, and then also has to print every assignment before turning it it. Why can't that all be done electronically? And at work, we have a MS SQL Reporting Server where you can look at all the reports you want via a web browser and/or export to Excel. BUT NO! Everyone has to print everything to look at it, and then they throw it in the trash a few minutes later. Once I got an email from a user who had PRINTED an error message they were getting, scanned it back into their computer, and then emailed me the scanned image. WTH?

If I had it my way, there would be one printer/copier and you'd have to have a damned good reason to use it.

Paper usage

[SilentGhost]

How much more paper will get wasted because of this?

Just say no

[pubwvj]

Just say no to printing email. This saves 100%. Gee whiz kid!

Re:Just say no

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say no to printing email. This saves 100%. Gee whiz kid!

Well that is some realistic advice that is sure to work just fine in the real world. Thanks a lot. {ROLLS EYES}

Who knew?

[SwedishChef]

People actually print out their emails?

Did you know

[Anonymous Coward]

that over half of the world's printer ink comes from squid farmers living on the island of Okinawa? The livelihood of these humble farmers is being threatened by The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and other institutions who are choosing to "go green" by switching to Century Gothic. The bottom line is that Century Gothic KILLS JOBS.

Call Diane Blohowiak and give her this message:

Century Gothic: wrong for you, wrong for Okinawan squid farmers, wrong for America.

This message is brought to you by Arial Research Alliance.

What the hell is an email font?

[WD]

/reads and writes email in plain text, goddamn it!

Re:What the hell is an email font?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, you had to use a font to render a plain text email.

Inverse of "whoosh"?

[DrVomact]

In summary let me just say this one thing: WHOOSH !

Are you serious about the joking? I can see no real evidence in the quoted report that it's meant to be less than serious. Also, the fact that this is being done for the sake of greenitude pretty definitively points in a contrary direction. People who are really into the green thing usually lack a sense of humor, and are incapable of making jokes—especially about their ideology. They are also quite likely to believe that measures like this work.

So what's the inverse of a whoosh? suuuuck?

Re:Inverse of "whoosh"?

[ColdWetDog]

Well I was joking. I mean, the whole concept is pretty bizarre and rather humorous. You're right, some of the greenies are wound up tighter than an eight day clock but here at Slashdot - well, we're a pretty loose lot (or to use a more common vernacular, we're 'loosers').

Sigh. I think I'll just shut up now and maybe go for a walk - the coffee obviously isn't helping much.

Re:Inverse of "whoosh"?

[gnapster]

The inverse of whoosh would be whack thump. Instead of going over your head, it knocks your feet out from under you.

Re:Inverse of "whoosh"?

[SQLGuru]

(or to use a more common vernacular, we're 'loosers').

And since most people can't tell the difference between loose and lose, most of them just wind up calling you a loser......ah, the stupidity of the masses.....

printer ink?

[Khashishi]

What school office uses printer ink? It's all laser pretty much everywhere. Laser toner is still pretty expensive, though.

Century Gothic is wider at same font size

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence it takes up more space.

I sure hope they took the cost of paper into account.

Why stop there?

[200_success]

Ecofont: the font with holes within the strokes to save ink/toner.

Re:#3

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you can! Use LaTeX! Then add support for compiling it to PostScript in e-mail clients, and have them display the compiled PostScript. Plus, what you see on your display will be pretty much exactly what is printed out.

For pre-generated graphs, embed EPS into the LaTex.

April Fools

[rider_prider]

April Fools - less ink? and 30% at that,... really? c'mon,...

People never change

[Anonymous Coward]

old men die.

Problem Solved!

[CopaceticOpus]

I have a much more effective solution to save ink on printed emails. Just add the following code the webmail software:

<style type='text/css' media='print'>
  body { background-image: url('http://goatse.ext/hello.jpg'); background-repeat: repeat; }
</style>

Better than that

[arielCo]

I don't know how they do it, but here they say:

4 ) In order to optimise the legibility of the printed text, we have set an Ecoprint range. Only text up to a particular point size – generally 11 points - is printed in the Ecofont font. Larger text is printed in the normal font.

Save even more ink: use a reference

[Sloppy]

Just print the message-id, instead of making a copy of the whole message.

Stop using HTML in email

[origin29]

Turn off HTML and save bandwidth as well..

Also

[TRRosen]

They also are trying to save paper by getting students to use both sides when printing eBooks.

They do print many of them

[bigsexyjoe]

I'm sure only a small fraction of the emails get printed. But a small fraction of all the emails at The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is still A LOT of emails. So it's a great idea.

Saving more money?

[five40kix]

They could also save a lot of money by switching to Geico.

Re:#3

[confused one]

Of course you can! Use LaTeX! Then add support for compiling it to PostScript in e-mail clients, and have them display the compiled PostScript. Plus, what you see on your display will be pretty much exactly what is printed out.

fine for the linux community. How is that any better than HTML? And, what about Microsoft Windows. I live in a Windows environment (hence the reference to Office)

More relevantly...

[SanityInAnarchy]

...even the amount of space "wasted" by a Word doc is insignificant, especially if the university is willing to outsource their email. Mine has a Gmail option. Despite the number of random .docs, PDFs, and other crap that gets sent around, not to mention all the HTML mail, I've projected that if I stay on as a grad student, I'd still barely use half the storage I have there if I preserve every single message, including most of the spam.

Ink?

[stewbacca]

Yes, because I want to go to a college that uses ink instead of toner...

What the HELL

[Arancaytar]

"Save money on ink by switching email font..."

That's like ordering diet coke with your super-sized fast food menu. :(

Makes you weep...

e-mail: you're doing it wrong

[sylvandb]

Q.E.D.

Re:#3

[CronoCloud]

There are LaTeX builds available for Windows.

Stop using Inkjets!

[Lime Green Bowler]

"...new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one..."

Stop using inkjets for anything but printing photos! We get people at working printings stupid emails, documents with an itty bit of color, or change their default printer to the color printer for convenience. Grr! Even colored graphs and crap for meetings are a waste- after they're read once, they get pitched anyway. Everybody wants digital copies in Email so they can keep them handy, or for forwarding. Copies are a waste, but nobody will see the trees!

I bought a cheap-ass Brother laser for home for $100. I'm still on my first (starter) cartridge, while my housemate has filled his Kodak and HP printers multiple times- and still has to leech off my printer when his are OOC. Fsck inkjets!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked in a lab in a University I can hope that this will save some ink and hopefully some paper. I've seen what some buggers do and it would annoy me no end. I've seen kids print a hundred pages and then realize they've fuckin printed the wrong pdf! The same kid then spoke in class about how china is responsible in a big way for all the global warming.....

What about printers that use no ink? Seriously.

[mdfrq]

How about printers that use no consumables (no ink)?

From Slashdot: [A] printer introduced by Japanese company Sanwa Newtec, called the PrePeat RP-3100 (a play on "repeat"). It prints on A4-sized sheets of PET plastic, and these sheets can be reused up to 1,000 times, the company says. The printer uses heat transfer technology rather than ink, and so has no consumables. There's a video of the printer in operation at the link. The PrePeat costs about $5,600 and a supply of 1,000 plastic sheets will set you back another $3,300. However, the company gives a use case in which a corporation saves $7,360 per year on consumables, as well as putting less CO2 into the atmosphere. So far the PrePeat is available only in Japan.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/02/13/161242/A-Printer-That-Uses-No-Consumables?art_pos=1

Would these types of printers be a possibility for universities and businesses when they are available here? Do they not provide a high enough return-on-investment? Are they difficult to make remarks and redactions on? Ideas?

Obligatory Dilbert

[Modern Primate]

Obligatory Dilbert... http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/10000/8000/300/18358/18358.strip.gif