My wife is a scrapbook fiend, we likely print more pictures per year than many of you have in your entire life! Because of this addiction, we have spent a considerable amount of time looking at the various ways and places to get our pictures printed. We have explored printing photos at home as well as the more traditional avenue of getting prints at local stores and online vendors. While I was researching the cost per print of ordering for this post, my wife was able to rattle off the price for single, bulk, one hour and overnight processing of most of the local stores.

Let's take a look at the costs of getting your photos printed.

Do it at Home based on purchasing the ink and paper for at least 100 prints at a time.

• Inkjet starting at 15 cents per print and $50 for a printer.
• Dye sublimation starting at 28 cents per print and $150 for a printer.
  

If you are looking to cut a chunk out of your technology expenses than the quickest way to save money and be environmentally friendly is to carefully monitor what you are printing. Lifehacker has a great roundup of ways to cut down on how much you print. Before you scoff this off as yet another "stop buying a latte" methods of saving, take note that ink costs roughly $2,701 per gallon and doesn't require that you lower your intake of any addictive substances!

You don't need to throw your printer out to save money, thanks to technology there are many ways to save money by printing only what you really need. My favorites from the list of ink saving include printing only the selection you need, which comes in especially useful if you handle a lot of excel spreadsheets. Another of my favorite methods is to print to a PDF rather than using up ink and paper. Setting up a PDF printer is easy and free and doubles as a great way to track your online purchases. I keep a folder on my computer with receipts and warranty information stored as PDFs that way I can easily find the information when I need it.

Even if you consider yourself a master of technology this list has some great new ways to track and reduce your printing. Reducing your printing is an easy way to save money; even if you only save 2 reams of paper and a set of ink refills by changing your printing habits you'll have easily saved $50. If you happen to be a small business owner trimming your printing down is a quick way to cut office supplies, waste removal and likely storage since you'll be inclined to keep that paper in a box, in a closet somewhere for the next 5 years.

What is your favorite way to cut back on printing unneeded pages?

After having shared the secrets of buying a gas grill with you last week and thinking our current grill would last us another season, I have come to find out that grills have something in common with a more technology oriented item; the inkjet printer. You see our grill still works, sure the push button ignition failed last year, the grill grate needs replaced and it showed signs of weathering but it still got the job done. I spent some time last weekend cleaning it up, tightening bolts and I pitched the grate which you rest your food on with the plan of replacing it for $15 to $20 at a local hardware store. Boy was I wrong!

A new grill grate for our Charbroil brand grill costs just over a third of what I paid for the grill 2 years ago! It isn't a part that is no longer made, as the low end charbroil at most hardware stores has the same grate down to the centimeter. I find it difficult to believe that the high price tag is anything other than an incentive to simply purchase a new grill. The stores carried several other replacement grates in much larger sizes that fit higher end Charbroil grills for $15 to $25, but wanted $35 to $40 depending on the store to replace ours.

This reminds me of inkjet printers which typically go for next to nothing and come with starter ink packages. When these run out you can pickup a brand new printer for less than the cost of ONE new color cartridge! True the new printer will have the smaller starter cartridges again and you'll be clogging up a landfill but the urge to spend less is so tempting. The grill industry doesn't run on the same consumption principle that the inkjet companies do but that doesn't make me feel any better about their pricing strategies.

Keep in mind the cheapest grill may not be the best one for longevity sake. Anybody know of a hot deal on a grill in the coming weeks?