Do you ever wish you could save paper by printing two (or even four) pages of a document on a single sheet of paper? Or perhaps the document you are printing contains a lot of pages that you don’t really want or need; wouldn’t be great if you could exclude these from being printed in the first place?, which will not only save you ink and paper (and the planet), but will also produce a lighter, more accessible hard copy that only contains the content you actually want to read.
iPrint is a virtual printer driver that can deliver all of this. It is similar in concept to well known shareware software FinePrint, and although it isn’t as feature-rich as that software, it nonetheless does a wonderful job and, importantly, is 100% free software.
I learned of this software from a reader (thanks ZoNi!) in the comments section of my Gimposition review, a software which lets you format and print PDFs in booklet form. iPrint, however, gives the ability to print 2-or-4 pages per sheet, but in addition it allows the user to delete unwanted pages from the printed output. And because it installs as a virtual printer, it can do this for any document at that you seek to print, of any format.
Here’s a few PROS and a Wish list
PROS:
- It looks great: very cool user interface (see screenshot above).
- Applies to any printable document: irrespective of what format or application it is associate with.
- Auto-deletes blank or mostly blank pages: will automatically decide on redundant and/or mostly blank pages and mark them for deletion. (Note: double click on a ’deleted’ page to un-delete it).
Wish list (or how this software can be even better):
- The ability to apply borders: please.
- The ability to add page numbers: would be great, whether to auto-paginate paper sheets or individual pages.
Here’s a video illustrating program features:
The verdict: an excellent program that will not only save you ink and paper, but will give you a high degree of control over what you print. It may not have all of te features that (the shareware) FinePrint has (e.g.adding/removing margins, adding watermarks/stamps) but it may be the closest freeware program to it.
The bottom line is. if you have a printer this is a must install.
Version Tested: 6.1.0.2461
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 7.15 megs).
Samer Kurdi
I wish bloggers wouldn’t pretend that saving paper saves tress, or the planet. Paper is made from rags, used paper, and from trees that are farmed for the sole purpose of making paper. Without the market for paper, those trees would not be grown; they’re on land that is usually useless for anything but softwoods or rice.
So the next time you think you’re saving a tree by saving paper, remember that you’re not. You might be saving money, but you have virtually zero effect on tree farming.
It’s fairly common for nicer printers to include something similar in their drivers. You specify the numebr of pages to be printed on each side of a piece of paper. Word has this, too.
Paper really isn’t a big threat to the “planet”, no matter how you look at it. Paper making is messy but take things in perspective and it’s a relatively small impact. The Earth has a wonderful self-cleaning cycle 24/7/365.25…
This might be helpful if you use a slow inkjet and consider you time relatively unimportant or you need to save physical space. What’s more valuable, your time or a few sheets of paper? Probably your time.
@ Fred: its great to see you commenting again; it’s been a while I think … you’ve been missed.
As for saving the planet (or any other impossible seeming undertaking), I am a believer in small steps, not insofar as they might have a big impact, but just perhaps in that they might logically lead to bigger steps down the road.
But the planet notwithstanding, I find the idea of deleting pages you don’t want to be simply practical, and probably actually saves time in that you don’t have to deal with unwanted junk later on
The website may say free but the license agreement still says you have a 15 day trial period. I’ll let you know how this works for me.
BTW: Morely is correct. There are actually MORE trees in American now than at the turn of the last century. The paper and construction industries need wood to survive so they are making sure there are more than enough trees to go around.
@ Jack: it was shareware before they decided to make it freeware. I guess they didn’t update the license agreement, and there still is an option to “register” within the app itself, although the software will not ask you to do so ever.
Major companies in Australia (where I’m from) still log native forests to make paper products. I believe Japan is a massive importer of wood chips for paper production, including from the tropical forests of their poorer neighbours (eg Indonesia).
The US may have more trees now than previously (as does Japan, incidentally), but the US ain’t the whole world (strange but true).
Any FREE software that may help reduce logging of native forests around the world is probably a good thing.
@ Jay: you know, I agree. Thanks for telling us about the uniquely Australian circumstance (or should I say non-US).
I will say the following: driving through Washington state, I have seen entire mountains/forests re-covered with tiny trees to replace logged ones, and while that is laudable and commendable, it will take tens if not hundreds of years for those trees to transform into the kind of greenery that preceded them, that we logged (I am not talking about volcano-damaged areas, btw). No doubt someone is counting those trees and producing an impressive (“number of trees”) statistic.
In any case, I don’t proclaim to be an expert on this, just one person trying to figure things out.
One more interesting use of iPrint – it can be used as Print Preview for Chromium/Chrome!
(I have no idea why that browser don’t have such common option built-in)
Guys,
this tool may be also of interest for you http://real-printer.com/
Considering iPrint as I’ve used Fineprint for years but can’t upgrade to Win7 drivers without a full repurchase. Couple of points though – as of this post date, the license agreement for iPrint on install states the evaluation period is 15 days and ‘The Client must pay a fee determined by Inzone’ when that period expires. The iPrint web site states ‘Free Forever’ but that is not necessarily consistent with the legal niceties of clicking ‘I accept the agreement’ when installing.
Second point, often stated by a friend with 20+ years experience in the paper industry and continuing the off-topic theme, is that reducing the use of paper doesn’t save trees as noted above (as by and large most printer paper comes from trees grown for making the paper) but it does remove the energy to produce the paper (harvest/recycle, pulp, process, package, ship – which is the ‘eco’ part) and saves the consumer money/waste (which is the common sense bit).
Finally stopped worrying about the license shenanigans and have given this a try. Nice interface, pleasant to look at, but for me it’s a non-starter because it doesn’t give me double-sided printing. I can get multi-page printing from most of the Word-like apps anyway, and many of the printer drivers themselves, but double-sided and selective print were always my reasons for using Fineprint. iPrint does the selective print but not double sided (at least not in the version I had downloaded – v6.1). Since my printer doesn’t do automatic duplex, that’s immediately up to a 50% paper wastage unless I buy a new printer (bizarrely enough, buying Fineprint is actually about as much as buying a new printer although probably not one with auto-duplex!). The search goes on.