I was going to bring my own printer to Vandy, since I don’t want to spend money at printing services every time I need something printed (which would be a HUGE pain as a composition/neuro double major). But I saw on the Vanderbilt list of things not to bring they listed your own printer, because it degrades the wifi or something. Are they going to search my room and confiscate it, or can I just bring a printer and be discrete about it? I’m in a single so it’s not like anyone would even know really.
I’d really appreciate knowing what current/former Vandy students have done in this respect.
They won’t confiscate it haha, but a wireless printer does slow down the wifi speed. VU Print is really efficient and there are printers everywhere on campus (even in dorm buildings). It costs just 5 cents for one black and white page. My roommate brought her printer and it was annoying for her to keep replacing the ink, and it was one extra item to pack when she had to move out. She ended up donating hers at the end of the year, and she now uses VU Print.
The issue isn’t with bringing a printer, it’s with bringing a printer that broadcasts a wireless signal. So, if you just wire your printer to your computer you will be fine. Even if you don’t it’s doubtful that anything would happen. The main reason that Vandy’s wifi is often slow and spotty has very little to do with wireless devices.
Personally, I just used VU Print. However, I rarely printed more than a dozen or so pages per semester. If you are going to print hundreds of pages per month you might consider bringing your own printer. VU Print costs 5 cents per B&W page and 25 cents per color page (they used to offer free B&W printing in the Biomedical Library, but they stopped that). Ink’s expensive but it’s not that expensive.
@Sophie1295@vandy93 Thanks for the insight. Is Vandy’s wifi really that slow? I’ve heard people complaining about it and I’m kind of worried… How do people get a good internet connection?
And I’ll plan to use VU print for now - I don’t expect to need any color printing, and 5 cents/page sounds pretty reasonable. Is there easy print access in dorm areas or residential halls?
Wifi hasn’t been that bad recently. People just complain really bad about it sometimes. Like if there is an outage for lie five minutes once or twice a semester people are instantly furious because everyone wants to be connected 24/7. 99% of the time it’s working great with good speed and everything, but you never hear anything about it since it’s working as it should. The 1% of the time it is slow people get really upset and start setting up local hotspots and stuff, which makes it even slower, etc.
There is usually a printer that is accessible through VU print in all dorm buildings on the first floor. For freshman, all of the commons houses have a printer in the lobby, and also the commons center has one. All the central places do too, like all the libraries and rand. A couple classroom buildings too.
VU print is way better. Dorm room size printers are notoriously bad and buggy. Ink is a pain to replace, and expensive. And the biggest problem I had is that you don’t have to print all that often, so my ink cartridges would get dry and crusty inside the printer, which I would always find out the morning something was due (as I was trying to print it) which made me scramble to figure out what to do.
@Senior2016M It’s not horrible but based on my experience I’d say interruptions happen more than a few times per semester. A few years ago Vandy restructured their wifi and instead of improving things it made it a lot worse. Even when the service is up the speed isn’t that great. All rooms have an ethernet port that will provide a faster connection.
As far as submitting electronically it depends on the prof. I’d say that half of them still want hard copies.
Maybe it’s different in different dorms. It’s true that the internet was being so annoying after they changed it, during the 2014-2015 academic year. 2015-2016 was completely fine for me though, had a problem like once or twice total. Maybe towers is worse because half the school lives stacked on top of each other in one spot.