College To Save Money By Switching Email Font

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College To Save Money By Switching Email Font

Posted by samzenpus on Friday March 26, 2010 @04:21AM from the smallest-things dept.

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."

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email? by rwven · 2010-03-26 04:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Only if people are printing emails...
1. Re:email? by ColdWetDog · 2010-03-26 04:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  This feels .... so wrong.
  
  Next up - saving electricity by using smaller fonts on the computer screens.
  
  I have a bad feeling about this....
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
2. Re:email? by Drathos · 2010-03-26 04:37 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  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.
  
  --
  End of line..
3. Re:email? by SnarfQuest · 2010-03-26 04:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Since it is a smaller, lighter font, you can save a lot of money by not needing such large hard disks to store them.
  
  --
  Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
4. Re:email? by RIAAShill · 2010-03-26 04:46 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
5. Re:email? by ColdWetDog · 2010-03-26 04:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  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 !
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
6. Re:email? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-03-26 05:31 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  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 ...
7. Re:email? by krnpimpsta · 2010-03-26 05:35 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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?
  
  --
  New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
8. Re:email? by Skuld-Chan · 2010-03-26 05:58 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
9. Re:email? by PatHMV · 2010-03-26 06:03 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
10. Re:email? by phoenix321 · 2010-03-26 06:27 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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"
11. Re:email? by Dogbertius · 2010-03-26 06:53 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  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
Heres an idea... by epdp14 · 2010-03-26 04:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Heres an idea... by wjousts · 2010-03-26 04:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
2. Re:Heres an idea... by wjousts · 2010-03-26 06:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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?
Why not laser print? by Sporkinum · 2010-03-26 04:23 · Score: 5, Informative

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?

--
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
1. Re:Why not laser print? by spinkham · 2010-03-26 04:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Seriously. If you're printing emails on the school's inkjet printers, your font is probably not the only change you need to make.
  
  --
  Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
2. Re:Why not laser print? by michrech · 2010-03-26 04:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  bork bork bork!
3. Re:Why not laser print? by larkost · 2010-03-26 04:56 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
4. Re:Why not laser print? by Korin43 · 2010-03-26 05:23 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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 ;)
5. Re:Why not laser print? by RollingThunder · 2010-03-26 05:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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. ;)
6. Re:Why not laser print? by DragonWriter · 2010-03-26 05:39 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
7. Re:Why not laser print? by gnapster · 2010-03-26 05:51 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I print out all my emails on glossy photo paper and file them in an index card box.
8. Re:Why not laser print? by compro01 · 2010-03-26 05:59 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
9. Re:Why not laser print? by Idiomatick · 2010-03-26 09:15 · Score: 2
  
  Because apple products are cost effective office tools..........
Printing email. by saintlupus · 2010-03-26 04:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

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
from a professor by commodoresloat · 2010-03-26 04:27 · Score: 5, Funny

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!
1. Re:from a professor by andrea.sartori · 2010-03-26 04:39 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  you mean, like google docs and a netbook?
  
  --
  Mostly harmless.
2. Re:from a professor by TheRaven64 · 2010-03-26 04:47 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Printer Ink? by TheRaven64 · 2010-03-26 04:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
disclaimer: in the industry by Anonymous Coward · 2010-03-26 04:28 · Score: 3, Informative

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]
1. Re:disclaimer: in the industry by Anonymous Coward · 2010-03-26 04:43 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.
Not a bad idea... by eeg3 · 2010-03-26 04:29 · Score: 4, Informative

...if only for the fact that Century Gothic looks better than Arial.
1. Re:Not a bad idea... by beakerMeep · 2010-03-26 04:41 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  meep
2. Re:Not a bad idea... by MaximumFrost · 2010-03-26 05:20 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  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.
.sig files... by CohibaVancouver · 2010-03-26 04:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
1. Re:.sig files... by beakerMeep · 2010-03-26 04:57 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Agreed
  
  =========
  Beaker Meep Esq
  Vice President of Product Testing and Evanglising Evanagalist
  Honey Doo Industries L.L.C
  1 Muppet Lane
  Hensonville, USA 31337
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  http://www.honeydooindustriesllc.com/
  Twitter: @MeepMeepMeep
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  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.
  
  --
  meep
2. Re:.sig files... by commodore64_love · 2010-03-26 05:07 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.)
  
  --
  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
3. Re:.sig files... by c++0xFF · 2010-03-26 06:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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).
Why not use Ecofont? by commodore64_love · 2010-03-26 04:32 · Score: 5, Informative

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

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
1. Re:Why not use Ecofont? by dniesen · 2010-03-26 05:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
2. Re:Why not use Ecofont? by frank_adrian314159 · 2010-03-26 06:17 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  That is all.
Re:Another idea by rvw · 2010-03-26 04:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

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?
Use semicolons instead of colons by krnpimpsta · 2010-03-26 04:44 · Score: 2, Funny

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

--
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
Wait... by EEBaum · 2010-03-26 04:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

...email has fonts?

--
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Re:Ah by Lemmy+Caution · 2010-03-26 05:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

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:Inverse of "whoosh"? by SQLGuru · 2010-03-26 05:52 · Score: 3, Funny

(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.....
Better than that by arielCo · 2010-03-26 06:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

--
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Re:Ah by vishbar · 2010-03-26 07:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

--
Ride the skies
Re:Ah by Idiomatick · 2010-03-26 09:22 · Score: 2, Informative

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 by owlstead · 2010-03-26 10:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

(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?