Best Printer for College?

[spinne1]

Wow...toner is very pricey...I'll stick to Inkjet printers.

Well, I see I am not getting through. Toner may SEEM pricey, but trust me, you will spend SEVERAL TIMES MORE in ink with an ink jet than you will for toner. When I had an Apple Color Stylewriter Pro, I was replacing ink every few weeks. An ink cartridge is good for maybe 500 pages. If you do much printing, that is NOT much. For my printer, the ink was about $40 for all the colors in one pack, or about $10 per color. I could find it a bit cheaper online, but with shipping, it took away most of the advantage. I also tried the ink refilling thing--the heads subsequently clogged up and became very buggy from then on.

A laser toner will last 4000-5000 pages. AND you can usually get them at a significant discount on ebay. But for argument's sake let's say you get one new from a store. Let's say you pay $90. For that $90 let's say you get the 5000 pages. (which for many is close to a year, or more) Total cost=$90. Now, let's say you use a color ink jet that gets 500 pages out of the ink, but often has one color or another running out. You will actually end up replacing ink more often than just every 500 pages because of the stagger of colors running out, but let's say on average that you get the 500 for the $40 worth of ink. For those same 5000 pages, you've now paid $400 in ink costs. You've paid $310 more in ink costs in the year or so that you printed 5000 pages (it might take longer). Let's also say you can get a deal and only pay $30 in ink for every 500 pages. Well, now your cost for 5000 pages is only $300. You see where I am coming from?

Your print quality on the ink jet is inferior, and you pay a ton more in ink. BUT you can print in color. So, my suggestion to you? Either get TWO printers and have the ink jet be VERY small (to save desktop space) and only use it to print your coding material and use the laser for all else, or learn to deal with your coding in only black and white and only get a laser.

Nevertheless many use ink jets and many are generally happy with them. My advice is free and therefore worth about as much. Good luck with whatever choice you make.

http://www.detnews.com/2002/techcolumns/0202/28/technology-428389.htm

 

[cwerdna]

look for deals on the samsung ML1740. there are some rebates that gets you down to $50 for a b+w laser printer. the mac osx drivers are listed on samsung's australia page but not on the us page...strange. works great for me.

oops, nerdykarim already said it!

I have a an ML-1740. When I got it, I recall is was somewhere around $60-70 after rebate. Laser printers are FAR cheaper per printed page than inkjets. If the OP doesn't care about color, laser is the way to go (since color lasers are comparatively expensive.)

The only downsides are that the ML-1740 comes w/a skimpy toner cartridge rated at 1000 pages while a replacement is rated for 3000. I'm not sure if this is standard practice now w/lasers, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is considering how much printer prices have come down. Looks like replacement (3K page) cartridges are $60-80 for this printer.

When I bought my previous two laser printers (an HP Laserjet 5P back in ~96 and a IIIP back in ~92), they came w/regular capacity cartridges. I believe the 5P cartridges have lasted me >3000 pages each (a little hard to say due to the way its page counter works, long story). I think I've only gone thru the original and its replacement (or 2 replacements) in its life, and it's still running now, but it's the cartridge it's on is running out.

I can't comment on how well the ML-1740 works w/Macs though as I've yet to own a Mac, but it works well w/my machine running Win2K over parallel. My only gripe is that it seems to sometimes (misload) load two sheets of paper at a time: printing part of a page on the top 1/8th of 1 sheet and the other 7/8ths on the other, shifted downards. My 5P almost never did that. BTW, it's WAY faster than my ancient 6 page/minute 5P.

 

[Mechcozmo]

HP 825c

It is a bit old, but works great. USB connection. Great quality/speed for its age. Oh, and huge freakin ink cartridges. If ink costs $6000 a gallon this has to be at least $80 worth of ink for $30.

 

[gamestriker]

Well, I see I am not getting through. Toner may SEEM pricey, but trust me, you will spend SEVERAL TIMES MORE in ink with an ink jet than you will for toner. When I had an Apple Color Stylewriter Pro, I was replacing ink every few weeks. An ink cartridge is good for maybe 500 pages. If you do much printing, that is NOT much. For my printer, the ink was about $40 for all the colors in one pack, or about $10 per color. I could find it a bit cheaper online, but with shipping, it took away most of the advantage. I also tried the ink refilling thing--the heads subsequently clogged up and became very buggy from then on.

A laser toner will last 4000-5000 pages. AND you can usually get them at a significant discount on ebay. But for argument's sake let's say you get one new from a store. Let's say you pay $90. For that $90 let's say you get the 5000 pages. (which for many is close to a year, or more) Total cost=$90. Now, let's say you use a color ink jet that gets 500 pages out of the ink, but often has one color or another running out. You will actually end up replacing ink more often than just every 500 pages because of the stagger of colors running out, but let's say on average that you get the 500 for the $40 worth of ink. For those same 5000 pages, you've now paid $400 in ink costs. You've paid $310 more in ink costs in the year or so that you printed 5000 pages (it might take longer). Let's also say you can get a deal and only pay $30 in ink for every 500 pages. Well, now your cost for 5000 pages is only $300. You see where I am coming from?

Your print quality on the ink jet is inferior, and you pay a ton more in ink. BUT you can print in color. So, my suggestion to you? Either get TWO printers and have the ink jet be VERY small (to save desktop space) and only use it to print your coding material and use the laser for all else, or learn to deal with your coding in only black and white and only get a laser.

Nevertheless many use ink jets and many are generally happy with them. My advice is free and therefore worth about as much. Good luck with whatever choice you make.

http://www.detnews.com/2002/techcolumns/0202/28/technology-428389.htm

Thats a good point. In high school, I used to help with tech problems and in the 3 years I did that, I only had to change the toner on a handful of printers (but they jammed up all the time; they were HPs).

At this point, I just want to get the most for my money so a laserjet would get me A TON of reports and source code and then some, but I also need the color printing capabilities, so I'm still swaying towards inkjet (some form of Canon), unless someone can suggest a very good quality (as in won't breakdown easily or jam up ) color laserjet for under 200, that can prin 3000-4000 pages on one toner cartridge?

 

[cwerdna]

Compusa has the Samsung ML-1740 for $50 AR

If the OP hasn't gotten a printer yet and is still willing to consider a laser printer for the lower cost per printed page, Compusa has the 1740 for $50 after rebate now. See http://www.techbargains.com/.

 

[savar]

Don't get an inkjet if you want to print papers for college classes. My inkjet always looked terrible, and I never used it for final drafts. Eventually it died and I just started printing everything in the school labs, and it was cheaper than supporting my Lexmark inkjet.

There are cheap laser printers out there, if you cant get one new for $200 buy a used one. Even used ones are still very nice.

My next printer (I do have a photoprinter now) will definitely be a laser. Inkjets look so crappy in comparison.

There's nothing wrong with waiting. You're not likely to get a paper due in the first two weeks of class. If that extra time helps you make a better decision then you should wait.

I'm looking for a good printer for college. One that has good ppm, color and black-and-white, not too overpriced (less than $200, preferredly around $100-150), and low ink/maintanance costs. Also good Airport Express compatibility; PictBridge is a plus.

I've had a few already suggest the Canon PIXMA IP4000 and it seems very solid. Would it be good as a printer for a college student?

And should I buy now and get it over with or wait until I'm about to start school (in mid/late-August)? Would it make any difference if I wait to buy a printer?

I appreciate the help.

 

[xsedrinam]

We're sticking with the Hp Inkjet Series for both our students. They've been great both with quality of printing and trouble-free.
X

 

[18thTomorrow]

I absolutely adore my hp psc 1315. It's an all in one and very compact for a college/dorm situation. It's a nice rectangular so when you're not using the scanner/copier feature you could even set stuff on top of it. Very, very good with ink consumption. Very good. Scanning is crisp and accurate. and I got it for less than $100 on a mail-in rebate. i can speak from experience that having a photocpoier in one's own room is really, really nice.

 

[shane-o-mac]

This printer is perfect!

Hey Guy!

I was in the same exact position as you when I got my powerbook. I wanted a cost effective color printer under 200 bucks that was fast and worked flawlessly with airport express.

I too was going to get a cannon ip4000. I was not to crazy about the form factor but everyone gave them good marks and I love cannon, but the sales guy pointed out an HP6840 as more cost effective cause it was a low end comercial or small business inkjet. The black ink cartridge can output 950 pages compared to cannon's 400 avereage. The cost of the ink is $32 to replace, I print a lot of papers and project the cartridge will last me a year solid.

Not to mention the printer is hella cool looking, and collates. The paper tray holds like 200 sheets tooo. And it works awesome with Aiport Express. So nice to be in my living room and print stuff upstairs in my office. It also has picbridge port on the front and can hook up via ethernet if u do not want to use the usb. I paid like $168.00 but also got a thirty dollar rebate off, shop around, here is a link to buy.com so you can check it out.http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10382529&loc