Discussion: That explains it

I've noticed that the quality was bad lately but thought it might be temporary. This actually happened a while ago (last year?) and I maxed out my print quality then and it seemed to work, but I suppose they reduced the quality yet again so that even maxing out looks bad (but not quite illegible for me). I'll try to remember how this was done and send you a note.

It goes without saying that you shouldn't try to print anything grayscale.

Figured it out, just *before* I sent a frustrated mail to Mary Beth and John :)

Click Print...
Then among the options is a menu labelled the application you are using (Preview, say), click on it and select Printer Features, then setting Toner Darkness to 10 seems to give acceptable quality. Took me a long time to find (like, I initially tried printing the article before 6pm, just finished now).

Stupid as.

What's stupid is reducing print quality so that everyone has to raise theirs locally to almost) get back the level of quality they are used to, or people using the color printer to print black and white. They could try to be more creative, like money saved from printing gets put into free drinks. Besides, no one ever told us we were using up too much toner...perhaps they could have just asked us nicely to be more conscientious.

You mean let people think for themselves...?

I think it could be a HR tactic. Those who can successfully google for solutions stay and get on with life, while those who can't get frustrated and leave.