Toner Save mode for Samsung CLP-300?

Our ML-1740 has been having fuser problems, so rather than eat
downtime to fix such a cheap printer we went out to get a new one. (We
may well fix the old one at our leisure to keep as a spare.) We found
a Samsung CLP-300 color laser at Office Depot for about $150 with a
rebate, researched the toner cost & page count and found it on par
with the 1740 for b/w, and bought one.

Now we find that the black print is significantly darker than the
1740's, and can't find a toner saving mode in the driver settings.
We'd like to extend the life of the black toner as much as we can. Is
there something we're overlooking? I downloaded the latest drivers
from the Samsung web site before I even opened the box, and never
opened the CD envelope.

Thanks for any insight into the matter.

I am not directly familiar with this printer in terms of how the drivers
work, but make sure you are not printing the blacks as a composite
of the CMY or even CMYK toners. You may need to set something within
the driver for black only printing to make sure the color toners aren't
added to the black (that would make a very dark black(ish) looking result.

If there is no toner savings mode, maybe use other adjustments to lower
black level or black density.

Art

John A. wrote:
> Our ML-1740 has been having fuser problems, so rather than eat
> downtime to fix such a cheap printer we went out to get a new one. (We
> may well fix the old one at our leisure to keep as a spare.) We found
> a Samsung CLP-300 color laser at Office Depot for about $150 with a
> rebate, researched the toner cost & page count and found it on par
> with the 1740 for b/w, and bought one.
>
> Now we find that the black print is significantly darker than the
> 1740's, and can't find a toner saving mode in the driver settings.
> We'd like to extend the life of the black toner as much as we can. Is
> there something we're overlooking? I downloaded the latest drivers
> from the Samsung web site before I even opened the box, and never
> opened the CD envelope.
>
> Thanks for any insight into the matter.

On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:43:20 GMT, Arthur Entlich
<e-printerhelp@mvps.org> wrote:

>I am not directly familiar with this printer in terms of how the drivers
>work, but make sure you are not printing the blacks as a composite
>of the CMY or even CMYK toners. You may need to set something within
>the driver for black only printing to make sure the color toners aren't
>added to the black (that would make a very dark black(ish) looking result.
>
>If there is no toner savings mode, maybe use other adjustments to lower
>black level or black density.

It's definitely printing with just the black toner.

I poked around a bit and found the color adjustment section. I
adjusted the brightness & contrast and got some better results. We
have some documents that print with shaded headers and those are
definitely more readable now. I'm not sure if I can do it to the
default settings without making everything print b/w, so I'm going app
by app. Some apps won't save their own printer settings, though.