FOLLOWING UP ON YESTERDAY’S PRINTER POST, Tony Daniel (author of Metaplanetary and Superluminal, among other things) writes:

I bought the exact same Brother laser printer as you a few months ago for much the same reasons. I’ve been printing out multiple drafts of my chapters on it and it’s been great.

Here’s a trick. There’s a little optical sensor on the toner cartridge lower left side that tells the printer the toner is low. I covered that over with a little piece of tape, and got nearly 700 extra pages out of the initial cartridge the printer came with. I read about this in a couple of reviews of the printer at Amazon and elsewhere, and it worked like a charm.

Plus, you get to feel totally cyberpunk for a couple of seconds!

That’s usually about as long as it lasts for me.

UPDATE: Reader Janet Glazier writes:

I use a Brother Laserjet Color HL4070CDW printer for my business and the cartridges are $100 a pop per color. I just tried the suggestion of covering the window and it worked!!! Further research on the internet indicates you can get anywhere from 700-1000 more pages. Reading Instapundit this morning (which I do every morning) has just saved my business probably $2000 this coming year. How can I ever thank you enough! I didn’t even have to use tape. I just colored it in with a black sharpie. THANKS!!!

Glad to help!