E-books to paper

[iHME]

Long story short:

I have just started to print out some of my ebooks to paper. Originally I translated or simply copied diagrams and text to paper by hand but thats not a good method when you are copying 2+ pages. Originally I used my own printer, but it was slow and ink costs. Now I just print at school of course I bring in my own paper as the printer is always empty.
And a tip to people going to do this: At first just put in one or two sheets of paper to see if theres some stuff pending to be printed, and then just circle these two sheets until the buffer is empty. You would not waste your precious part on some body elses works, wouldn't you? ;)

What are your methods of getting your ebooks to your place of working or do you just use a laptop?

[JekyllandHyde]

Personally, I keep my files on my laptop. I also keep a backup copy of all my files on a readable/write-able DVD.

For the books that I want a hard copy of, I print them off my laser printer, and then I bind them at home with a binding machine (my one cost me AU$50.00 at Office Works).

[Cho!]

I have a laptop running linux that I use to store all of my info, its a couple of gigs and I am too cheap to pay for dvd's. I may purchase an external hard drive. Of course all of this is useless without power or in the event of an EMP, so putting stuff to paper is a project of mine.

[iHME]

Hmm... Now that I have printed +1000 pages I have started to think about some sort of book binding. It would certainly help with +50 pages long books. I thought about making a "double sided printer". Connecting two ink jet printers to one computer and putting it so that the first one would print all pair less numbered pages (1,3,5,7,9...) then the papers would fall in to the input tray of the second printer that would print the paired numbered pages on the other side, resulting in a nice book with double sided pages. Effectively cutting paper costs to half.

[Hirudinea]

I thought about making a "double sided printer". Connecting two ink jet printers to one computer... Effectively cutting paper costs to half.

Sounds like a lot of work for nothing, most printers have a setting that allows double sided printing, my laserjet does it fine, print all the odd pages, put the pages back in the paper feed and print all the even sided pages.

[iHME]

Sounds like a lot of work for nothing
Thats true. It would need a pretty large amount of work for nothing useful.
But being a person who likes tinkering it is no surprise that I come up with something like that. Anyway I need to look more in to book binding, could some one perhaps upload a book about it? :)

[Lenkers]

First print the even pages and than the uneven pages on the other side of the sheet, so you dont need to turn them afterwards. Make some marks on your printer, how you have to put the pages into the tray. Well, its sometimes a bit confusing ;).

My oki laser printer jams frequently, if i print more than 20 pages at once. What i mean is: buy a heavy duty printer! That will safe a peck of trouble.

[Hirudinea]

(B)being a person who likes tinkering it is no surprise that I come up with something like that.

Tinkering is the mother of useless invention. :)

Anyway I need to look more in to book binding, could some one perhaps upload a book about it? :)

There are plenty of sites online, perfect bound (with glue) seems to be the way to go, just search "bookbinding", and try YouTube, I believe they even have videos.

[monkeyboy]

I kinda like fineprint:
FinePrint
Use FinePrint to significantly reduce printing costs while enhancing and managing complex print jobs.
save paper and ink
delete unwanted pages
print multiple pages onto a sheet
print double-sided
print booklets
create electronic letterhead
add watermarks, headers, footers
save as JPEG, TIF, BMP
www.fineprint.com

Older version (with reg code), works for me:
http://rapidshare.com/files/102686827/tacos.rar
It installs as a printer driver & intercepts print jobs, then allows you to lay them out - 2 sided, 2/4/6/8 to a page, evens, odds, etc...

Perfect binding is NICE. But I usually use comb binding. You can get a box of 25 combs for $3-$5. Then just use the comb punch machine for free at most Office Depots, Kinko's & Office Max may have them, too.

[Hirudinea]

I kinda like fineprint:
FinePrint
Older version (with reg code), works for me:

Sounds good, I'll give ti a try, thanks.

Perfect binding is NICE. But I usually use comb binding. You can get a box of 25 combs for $3-$5. Then just use the comb punch machine for free at most Office Depots, Kinko's & Office Max may have them, too.

All that matters is that the book is there when you need it.

[megalomania]

There are printers that print on both sides of the paper at the same time. If you are going to print a large number of pages I suggest getting a laser printer, one of the older black and white varieties can be had rather inexpensively nowadays.

I try to score free printing if I can swing it. I once tried printing my entire collections of patents at work until I jammed up the printer... then I found out it had a counter, date and time code, and logs which computer sends the print commands. Some libraries or universities might offer free printing... at the very least you may be able to score some paper.

Ink miser software and ink refills would be the way to go to save money. The cost of printer ink from retailers is more than Dom Perignon by volume! I bought my printer after researching Consumer Reports, it has the lowest cost per page at its resolution (a little less than 4 cents per page). A laser printer would cost less.

For binding I like to use a 3 hole punch and put the pages in a 3 ring binder. There are certainly instructions online about better bookbinding methods. I think one way is to dip the margin side of a stack of pages into hot glue and attach a strip of bandage before pressing into a hard cover.

If you have the eyes for it there is software than can miniaturize printed text into booklet format, 4 pages on one 8.5x11 piece of paper. Many books are already in the 6x9 format, and limiting printed margins can reproduce these books almost exactly to scale.

[Demolition Man]

My dad has sold copiers my whole life, so cost per copy is etched into my brain, heh. If you absolutely must print, DON'T go to Kinkos or one of the print on demand places. The cost per copy there is EXPENSIVE, and you are better off buying a second hand copier off ebay, look for one that has 50k per month usage. This just means you can't run your entire e-book collection in two days, but space it out so you don't burn out the consumables (toner, fusing unit).

That being said, good laser printers are getting cheaper by the day, and sometimes you can even score them free on craigslist and just have to buy toner, waste toner cartridges, ect., which, while not cheap, is cheaper and more discreet than running "How to Make Meth" manuals at your local library at 10 cents a page.

[monkeyboy]

OK, I was thinking about posting this after Mega's post, but thought it might be a bit off topic. But after what Demolition man had to say, I must share/brag:

A couple years ago, I helped a friend move into a new office space. Over in the corner, there was an old Laser printer. I asked him what's up with that? He told me "Previous tenant left it, it's an Apple, we only use Windows. You want it?" I go over & peek at the back. Several ports I don't recognize, and a parallel port. Carried that beast out to the car, pronto.

It's an Apple Laser writer 16/600. Came with several bottles of refill toner. The drum is rated at around 450,000 copies. I get it home & hook it up to my PC, worked like a charm.

But it did have a few odd quirks. Things I couldn't seem to change with the windows driver interface. Researched it a bit, found out you could either set them by hooking it up to an apple, or by sending postscript commands to it. Managed to change a couple things through postscript, but kind of a pain.

Decided I should fill out the ram to the full 32 Meg capability. So I went to the local PC recycler place. They had the ram I was looking for for $10. When I told the guy what I needed it for, he says "I thought you were a dyed in the wool PC guy?" I told him I had it hooked up to a PC, & then about not being able to mess around with all the settings. So he sold me a fully functional Apple laptop (PowerBook 150)& cable for another $10.

I just leave it hooked up all the time, when I need to make a change that I can't in windows, I just boot up the Apple. Much more stuff in there, and changes effect all print jobs.

Pretty sweet for a printer I'm into a total of $20 for. I think I've got about 20,000 pages out of it so far...

Then there's the copier I picked up off CraigsList for free. Came with several CASES of toner (at $30-$40 a bottle). They'd bought one of those whiz-bang copiers with a collator, ADF & multiple internal trays. This one came with a bunch of trays (6 or 7, I'd have to go dig through & count 'em), you just have to change them out to use a different size or orientation of paper. I've ran over a 100,000 copies on it, the heater thingy went bad, but I picked up another on the net for $40.

Just recently picked up an offset press for free off CraigsList, too. MultiLith 1250. But I haven't done any thing with it yet. I'm going to have to read up on how to make it work first. Way too many knobs & levers that I have no idea what do...

Also several inkjets that I've been refilling for ever. Not to endorse anybody in particular, but Kalvins.com has awesome instructions for refilling all kinds of cartridges. If you buy a "Universal Ink/toner refill system" for around $20-$25, it comes with all of them on CD(plus the tools), or you can look an individual cartridge up on their web site. Sometimes you can get the kits on sale for $15. Makes the cost for refills less than $2-$3/color.

The maintenance guy at a local school told me they were going to throw out a bunch of refill stuff, because nobody could figure out how to use them correctly. So I snagged that. A whole bunch of 12 oz bottles of ink. So my cost is going to be $0 for a looong while.

Probably have to buy new empty carts from Kalvins now & then, as the print heads wear out after a while. If you refill immediately, they seem to last a couple dozen times. If you let them dry out at all, much less.

Official (old) cheap bastard tip:
A real long time ago, I had a dot matrix printer. It cost like $10 for a replacement ribbon. I figured out that if you put it in a bread sack, then sprayed about a 1/4 can of WD-40 in there, then left it sealed over night, it was as good as new. Several times!

[Demolition Man]

monkeyboy, I envy you for that setup...the house I'm renting now doesn't have the space nor the power capacity to run even a laser jet side by side with my inkjet. Luckily, I'm moving out in month, and my new house will have my own home office area, separate from living spaces, so I am going to keep my eyes out for a copier (they go up all the time here). The offset printer will be nice once you get it running.

On topic, I actually have been looking at going the e-book reader route for most of my documents. I mostly have them all in PDF format anyway (with a few exceptions in .lit), and along with my radical and rougesci related material, I have Project Gutenberg files, various sci-fi books, and other electronic book material that I'd like away from the computer, and don't feel like paying a fortune in ink and paper to get it in portable form. I've been looking at the Sony (because the Kindle has to have it's PDFs converted at $ 0.10 a pop), and an off brand Chinese reader from Hanlin that is slightly more expensive but larger e-ink screen. That could be a possibility for you iHME, especially since you can bring damn near your whole collection in SD format, and have instant access to chemical tables, expedient arms plans, or just plain old entertainment

[Snake_Eyes]

I usually go to the library and print everything out since it's free. Then I just put all the pages in sheet protectors and put them in a binder. You can spend less than 15 dollars at staples on a binder and about 200 sheet protectors that'll house pages front and back and you don't have to make any holes in them.

[iHME]

I'd love to have one of those e-paper/e-ink portables. My current laptop is a 150mhz Dell Latitude XPi CD, new litium ion battery and a 6gb hdd. It runs Windows 95 (it actually has linux also, but stuffing a distro with a gui to 2gb is beound my skills (tried Deli linux(and failed to get it to boot with gui), only terminal so far. Only way to get books larger than 1,38mb is to burn them to a cd. This also creates additional back up for me in the same time. I can bear the lag in picture rendering and such but the screen contrast is just so god damn horrible, it is good only for palaying red alert (one of the only games that run well on it). On the other hand think about the lightnin fast rendering a fps on paper, You can see what you want in a mater of seconds! No boot up, no batteries no lag! :p

Now to show some of my binds, I came up with all of the techniques by my self.
I do all my binds by hand.

Over view of binds (http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff315/iHME/?action=view&current=IMG_5557.jpg)
The major styles shown (http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff315/iHME/?action=view&current=IMG_5556.jpg)
Home workshop guns book is hastily bound with copper wire as my dremel clone started to produce smoke.
The luty and gunpowder books ware bound in my usual style (http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff315/iHME/?action=view&current=IMG_5555.jpg)
A close shot of perhaps my most clean bind so far. (http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff315/iHME/?action=view&current=IMG_5558.jpg)

I just found out that my school has two color laser that do two sided printing, it is tough harder to get printing un attended at them tough.

[monkeyboy]

(it actually has linux also, but stuffing a distro with a gui to 2gb is beound my skills (tried Deli linux(and failed to get it to boot with gui), only terminal so far.

Try Puppy linux. Designed from the ground up to also run on older, slower hardware. It makes 'em sing! I've put it on quite a few machines in that range. Sometimes you have to try a few different video settings to get one that'll work on a Laptop.
http://puppylinux.com/

[Jefferson Davis]

I have myself started printing my e-books. And found a nice piece of software for turning pdfs into booklets. The software is called CutePDF .There is trial for it and it does not seem to expire, just adds a water mark to the first page. It allows you to set margins, as well as choose which binding type. There is a small tutorial on how it works on youtube. Heres the link http://youtube.com/watch?v=5Q2ueGUNtKY

[Jefferson Davis]

Last night I found a full version of cutePDF with serial. Figured I would share it with you all. So no more watermarks on the first page when printing.
http://rapidshare.com/files/108986874/snd-CutePDF.Professional.3.3.zip.html

[Killy]

When printing in school or library or similar, be very careful you dont leave a trail that could make you suspicious (like pages of some "underground" books)
to employees there.

[megalomania]

You mean don't leave the rules to Fight Club in the copy machine? Indeed ANYTHING about guns, explosives, drugs, lockpicking, etc. will freak out the average idiot employee or soccer mom. The fedgov has used the media well to make the sheeple so paranoid about information. So much for freedom of speech when you get hauled in to the Grand Inquisition for looking at legal reading material.

[Killy]

Heh, I didnt think of that scene from Fight Club but you remind me of that.

Well, information is not illegal, but to people, you would seem strange if they see what you are dealing with ;
possible quote
"Check what shit that weird guy is always printing"

Similar situation would be if they see you that you download porn in library, its not illegal, but its still uncommon (especially if you arent teenage anymore)

Of course, it could always turn out that you could possibly meet somebody with same interests on that way, but I guess the chances are like winning a lottery ticket.

In the end, if something happens related to you, they can gossip to police that you printed that stuff.

[iHME]

To cover ones trails is a must if printing in a public location. I bring my own paper. I clear the printing que if I run out of toner or paper. I also print my files from my usb stick. Next thing would be implementing a hardware keylogger on the machine and starting to use someone elses login.
Oh, I also aquired a used A3 inkjet printer. I really don't know what to do it with. I haven't had even time to test it.

Edit: A quick note the rapidshare captcha is getting more and more ridiculous over time.

[Thorald]

I don't tend to print my eBooks as there are several people who live in my house and I have to allow paper for them to use, as well as me. When I do print them out I tend to just print certain pages that are of relevance, than the entire eBook.

Also I would never print anything other than work from my schools printers, as they monitor and keep a record of everything that is printed. Plus the Computer Suite where the printers are located is supervised at all times by a 'Technician' who would rant at you if you printed Non-School related work. Plus he would probably have a look...

Also as the Internet is mostly blocked on the Computers due to misuse and Yahoo Briefcase and 4Shared are blocked from being accessed the only way of getting the eBooks in would be via Flash Drive... And too many of them go 'missing'...