Note that many printers you'll find via Google, are also local providers in their communities--maybe your community--so while you may want to support your local printer, consider the possibility that your local vendor also does business online.

The first important step toward a successful print job is sending your documents in the right format. Most online print providers have become adept at accepting a wide range of files--from Microsoft Word documents to bitmap images, but most of these formats have a number of pitfalls.

For example, Word documents only render properly if all the fonts they contain are installed on the host machine, which may not be the case for the computer your printer uses. Bitmap fonts, on the other hand, only support a fixed resolution and could make text and line art appear jagged.

The golden standard, then, is to use a format that leaves as little to chance as possible. In the past, this meant using something like Adobe's Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), but, these days, almost every printer will accept PDF files. And this, of course, is great news for us Mac users, since OS X , making producing perfect documents much easier.