15 January, 2011
Postage, stamps & stationary – one of the categories on the wrong side of the ledger for not only businesses but home users as well. So why are we still printing letters & documents and sending them through the mail? It is still hard to get by without having some sort of printer but how often we use that printer and therefore how much we spend on it is up to the individual. As an IT support / computer business we rarely ever buy a stamp and send anything through the mail – with the exception of packages or goods. When you stop to consider it – anything that is already on your PC / laptop can be emailed to the recipient for free. What about a hand written note or even a hand drawing that is not on your PC? In this case you can scan the document and email the resulting scan file. Yes, but this is where many people run into trouble. Often they are scanning at too high a resolution and they end up with a picture file that is too big to email. There are two simple cures – the first is to drop the scanner resolution to at least less than 300 DPI. Unfortunately many scanners have a default of around 600 DPI which it not necessary except for photo reproduction. In fact if you just want to scan text or a hand written note then around 75 to 150 DPI is plenty. The second cure is to “print” the scan file to a “PDF” document (Portable Document File). This works well – especially if you already have large scan files on the PC that you have trouble with when trying to email. To print to a PDF file you will need some software on your PC and one of the best little utilities is Cute PDF Writer – available for free download from www.cutepdf.com This is program takes only a minute to install. After installation it shows up as an extra printer on your computer and therefore you can print to it (create a PDF file) from your normal software – just like printing to an inkjet or laser printer. The resulting PDF file will be small enough to easily email and there are other benefits as well. When you create a PDF file – the person that you send it to can view it on the screen, save it for future viewing or even print it to their printer – but they cannot modify it. This is handy for sending quotes, invoices, statements etc. that you wouldn’t want the recipient to be able to modify. Kerr Solutions is at 128 Musgrave Street & is contactable on 49 222 400.
