Individuals who notice their ink cartridges do not produce the results they are expecting on printouts may find their devices are configured incorrectly for their computer.

The New York Times' J D Biersdorfer explained that outdated driver software for the printer is one cause of incorrect printing, in which case he recommended visiting the manufacturer's website to download any updates, so users can be sure they have the latest files.

Recently, it was also stated by photography expert Lesa Snider in an article for Macworld that other factors could affect the way a printout appears, including the paper and the inks used, as well as the dot pattern of the printer.

Mr Biersdorfer noted that some users of Internet Explorer 9 could end up seeing documents produced incorrectly due to the way the web browser operates.

"Internet Explorer 9 shifts the workload from the computer's main processor to the graphics processor," he explained, adding that if a person's graphics card does not support this, printouts may differ from what is displayed on the screen.