Let Me Say This About That: Printing? Knock it Off!!
My Aged Mum was an early adopter. She bought one of the earliest Apple ][ C computers sold in her town, and she used it for years. When the Internet began to prevail in the early Nineties, she was right there with a modem and a browser. When life began to get a bit complicated for her as she grew older, we planned a week to help her get her house whipped into shape. That’s when I found it: An entire file cabinet full of printouts of Web pages, carefully filed away and never looked at again. And they had overrun the file cabinet into several of those banker’s box files. I couldn’t hold it against her. Elderly folks sometimes get that hang-onto-stuff mindset. I quietly disposed of all those printouts, and it took a large trash bag to do it.
Let’s fast-forward to 2009. The Internet has grown significantly. We all have fast computers and fast connections. The last set of ink cartridges I bought for my good old HP set me back about $50. More importantly, if we have any sense at all, we’ve all got decent browsers which uniformly have a little tab or menu item at their tippy-top. It says…”Bookmarks.”
I’ve spent the last three days doing revisions to a website for a set of clients who cling to their printers. Each and every page and document must be, in their words, “printable.” They don’t want to use the print formatting tools–they just want their pages to print. On their browsers. On their monitors. On their printers. What does this mean? Well, in the absence of their ability to pick “page setup” from the “print” menu, it means a whole lot of time fiddling with what they call their “printable pages,” which is a whole ‘nother set of Web pages. Each “real” Web page is linked to its corresponding “printable” Web page. I have no idea what they do with all their printouts. Their offices are immaculately tidy. But print we must, and print we shall, and I just do it and send the bill.
Folks, if you’re doing this kind of printing, it’s time to stop! I can only think of one or two kinds of Web pages I ever bother to print. I do print out recipes. I tried keeping the laptop in the kitchen, and it got all scungeely. When I looked at how grubby my cookbooks were, I decided printing was the better option. I also print out patterns and instructions if I need to be working away from the computer. Aside from that, why bother printing from Websites? Print your business letters. Print your last will and testament. Print envelopes for your bills. But if it’s on the Web, you can link to it, you can bookmark it, you can grab a feed for it, and you don’t need to print it.
Hence my new little sticker, which I’ve carefully made for this blog when I needed a break from putting up all those print-friendly/earth-unfriendly pages.
The only thing I print out are driving directions, and they get tossed out as soon as the trip is over.