How to check if your printer has any ink left

From ArticleWorld

When printing, you will sometimes see how the colors in your documents appear malformed. This may happen because your printer has run out of ink. Here is how to check how much ink there is left:

1. Open Microsoft Word (or another program with drawing functions) and create four rectangles. One of these rectangles will be black, another one will be pink, one will be turquoise and the last one is yellow.
2. Print this document and take a look at the paper. If all the colors appear correctly, then you have enough ink. However, if any of these rectangles appear unclear or in a wrong color, you should probably buy a new ink cartridge.

Notes

This test is actually an old test borrowed from old typographies. The trick lays in the fact that the four rectangles use every major combination of your printer's color cartridge (which actually works by combining a number of primary colors).

You can create rectangles in Microsoft Word by opening the Drawing Toolbar in View, Toolbars, and pressing the rectangle button. Right-click on a rectangle and choose Format Autoshape to color it.

You can also use Microsoft Paint, which usually comes shipped with Windows. Go to Start, Programs, Accessories and click Paint. On the toolbar from the left, click the Rectangle button and draw the outlines of four rectangles. Now click the button with the bucket (the Bucket Filling tool), choose a color in the lower-left palette, and click inside the rectangle which you want to fill up with that color.