I guess this Ecofont deal is an inspired idea. Somewhat reeks of the, "If I'm going to claim to be an environmentalist, I sorta have to use it," slant that makes a certain flavor of personality use a hybrid, buy food from Whole Foods, pay more for recycled paper, yet still use 120 brightness toilet paper. You know, them.

The gist is that they cheese grated the font, and put holes all over it. As they describe it, "After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink."

I tried it out at 9 pt like the creators suggest. I must have Thunderbird printing even smaller, though, as I can only barely make out a few holes, and where I see them it looks a little like my toner's running out. TextEdit made the holes more pronounced. I guess that might be 20% less. If it is, kudos. Except for disappearing lines in "n" and "t", etc, it's not too bad.

Do your part, hybrid owners. And for the rest of us, consider saving some toner. Now if they'd just create a monospace version...