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| A Fine Way To Print |
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Software Reviews September 2004 • Vol.15 Issue 9 Page(s) 23 in print issue |
A Fine Way To Print | ||
Ease Of Use 5 Installation 5 Documentation 5 Price 3 Overall Score 4.6 / 5 Much of the cost associated with owning a computer is incurred at the time you purchase it. Not so for printers. You can buy a printer for as little as $50—even less if you account for rebates—but you will inevitably spend many times more than that for paper and replacement ink or toner cartridges. Indeed, depending on the type of printer you use and the type of documents you print, you could pay more than 25 cents for a sheet of paper, more than $30 for an ink cartridge, and more than $80 for a toner cartridge. Recognizing the high cost of printer ownership, a pair of California-based software developers authored a program that lets users output multiple pages of text to a single sheet of paper. Their program, which is available today as FinePrint 5.25, helps you conserve paper, ink or toner, time, and money by providing an assortment of efficient printing functions. The keystone function of FinePrint is its ability to print two, four, eight, or more pages of content on an 8.5- x 11-inch sheet of paper by dividing the sheet into halves, quarters, eighths, or more equal parts. For a test, we printed a Microsoft Word document created in Times New Roman 12-point font. The printed document was easy to read at 8 pages per sheet and remained legible even when we configured FinePrint to produce 32 pages of text on a single sheet of paper (although we definitely recommend investing in a magnifying glass for comfortable reading at such a resolution). We should point out that we conducted our tests on an HP LaserJet printer. Whether an inkjet printer would provide comparable clarity and legibility at a 32:1 printing ratio is uncertain. Beyond its ability to print multiple pages to a single sheet of paper, FinePrint helps you save on printing costs in other ways. For example, it gives you the option of removing ink-wasting graphics and unwanted pages from the documents you choose to print. It also lets you convert colored text to black so that you can save your costly color inks for the times you need them most. As if that wasn't enough, FinePrint also supports double-sided printing on any printer. These settings, which you can achieve with a simple point-and-click, are not permanent and do not alter the contents of the original document. The program's remaining features are designed to enhance your printing capabilities. We particularly appreciated a group of features referred to collectively as Stationery. The Stationery features make it easy to stamp your print jobs with the date, time, page number, total number of pages, your name, and more. You can set the customized stamp to appear as a header or footer or as a gray watermark in the middle of the page. You also can stamp the print job with a watermark that denotes it as a draft or final version; as urgent, confidential, or top secret; or for internal use only. You can even customize the watermark with any message of your choosing. Rounding out FinePrint's robust feature set are a universal print preview function, an option for printing documents in booklet format, the ability to save documents in a variety of formats, an option for combining documents from multiple applications into a single print job, a scaling function that allows you to resize documents of unusual proportions for printing on a standard sheet of paper, adjustable margins and gutters so that you can leave room for binding, and a paper-saving meter that tracks and reports how much paper you have saved using FinePrint. The product also includes FormFactory, a feature that enables you to create custom forms or letterhead and then use the forms or letterhead as underlying templates when printing other files. Our only complaint is that FinePrint carries a relatively hefty price tag for something that amounts to little more than a printing utility. You have to print a lot to justify its cost. Having said that, however, we must admit that its value extends far beyond the monetary savings. FinePrint makes printing easier, faster, and better.  by Jeff Dodd
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