How can I save you money? There are numerous ways.
Save money on printing.
What I have seen over and over again is that so many people use inkjet printers. The key reason is that these are the main type of printers that are sold at retail stores. There is a reason for that. What you will notice about inkjet printers is that if you do much printing you will spend a lot of money buying refill cartridges for them. Typically these cartridges will cost between $25-30 each. The problem is that typically these cartridges will only give you about 200 pages before you have to buy another one. That is a significant amount of money spent on cartridges.
In some cases you may want to do color printing and that is fine on an inkjet. If you do mostly black and white printing there is a much cheaper solution. Black and white laser printers are far cheaper to operate. Let me make a disclaimer here. I have no connections with Staples Office Supplies. You can go to their website and typically buy a Brother brand remanufactured single function laser printer for $75-100. The first toner cartridge that comes with the printer will normally do about 1,500 pages before it has to be changed. That in itself gives you enough value to buy the printer. Bring that empty cartridge to me and I can refill it for $40 and turn it into a high yield cartridge that will do around 2,500 pages. What is cheaper? Pay $40 to get 2,500 pages or buy 12 $25-30 inject cartridges to do that same thing. That is at least $150 of savings.
There is another advantage to the laser printer. As we all know, the residual ink on the end of the inkjet cartridges can harden and it stops working. You might not have used it but a few times but if it hardens and stops up you might have to replace it. Sometimes you can use a Q-tip with some alcohol on the end of it to get it to working again but sometimes even that will not work. Laser printer cartridges use toner, which is a powder. The cartridge never hardens no matter how long it sits and you do not get smudges on your paper.
You are wondering if you should just throw away the ink-jet printer. The answer is no. If you need to do color printing use that one. The solution is very simple. You can install more than one printer on a computer. You can install three or four if needed so we just simply install the laser printer alongside the ink-jet printer and you can use both of them as needed. When you start to print something you just select which one you want to use in the drop down print box. See, that is easy and you save lots of money.
Laptop Parts
Another item to save money on concerns laptops. Many people go back to the original manufacturer to buy batteries and chargers. I recommend that people go on Ebay or Amazon and buy them there. You will pay 1/4th the price for one there as opposed to the manufacturer. They are new and typically they are all made at the same factory in China.
Hardware Upgrades
Here is another way to save money. Sometimes a computer can get older and slower. You might think that you just need to buy a new one. That is not always the case. Sometimes an inexpensive upgrade like some more memory or even a different processor can speed it up tremendously. I have bought numerous used processors off of Ebay and installed them with great results. I have four of them myself and you would not believe the results you can get at times. I don’t buy many used computer parts but things like processors just about never fail. Those things are as tough as a sewer cover. The cost of this type of upgrade depends on your system. If it is a desktop it is very easy. A laptop costs a little bit more due to disassembly. There are times when $75-100 can extend the life of a computer for another three or four years.
Another inexpensive upgrade is a memory upgrade. Mind you that I am not talking about storage here. Quite often people mistake memory with hard drive space. Those are two completely different items. Memory is RAM and it has a huge affect on computer speed. The sad thing now is that manufacturers are still selling computers with only 4 gigabytes of memory. That is just not enough. All computers, regardless of their intended use should have 8 gigabytes of memory. This is one of the key bottlenecks that I see slowing computers down.
Another great upgrade option is a solid state drive. For years I wondered why computers were still slow even with all of the advancements in processors, memory and hard drive size. After installing a few solid state drives I saw how badly the old spinning drives were slowing computer down. Your typical hard drive is a spinning drive that has a lot of moving parts. There is an option to replace that with a solid state drive. A solid state drive is like a hard drive with memory chips on it. There are no moving parts therefore making it multitudes faster and more dependable than spinning drives. In recent years the cost of these drives has come way down making them much more affordable. I can clone your old drive to one of these solid state drives and switch them out for a very economical price. Cloning it leaves it looking just like the old one with no reloading of software or files. This will give your computer a significant increase in performance.
Software Upgrades
Here is another solution. Windows 7 has run out of support. That means that Microsoft no longer sends out security updates for it. Some of these computers can also be upgraded just by adding some memory and installing Windows 10 on it. If it is a 64 bit processor it is a good candidate for upgrade. I will be glad to take a look at it and give you a free quote. All of it depends on the type of computer it is. I will tell you pretty quickly if it is a good candidate to upgrade. Quite often $150 can get you a near new computer. If your computer is not a good candidate for an upgrade I won’t waste your money. Remember, quotes are free and do not obligate you to go with the upgrade or repair.