Trying to decide wherther it’s worth it to buy a smaller printer for my dorm room, or deal with the trek to the library everytime I need to print something. Thanks in advance for any help!
My kids did not attend UMD but both had small printers in their room which they found useful.
@tayt04 - My D, going into her senior year, has always had her own printer. So has her 2 apartment mates. Make sure you can connect to your laptop via USB cable.
I don not know what the setup is at UMD College Park is like, but some Universities have printers (and computers) available in the dorm. Printers are cheap, it is the ink that is expensive. If money is an issue, I would use your personal printer sparingly and only when necessary, relying on the school’s printers (if it is free to students or within your printing allotment for the year).
At my son’s U, he was given 130 “UPrint” credits per school year for printing personal student material. He did not have is own printer or saw the need for one, given easy access to printers around campus. He was a STEM major, so did only a few writing-intensive courses. I was also taken aback by the large number of students that were using the school provided computers in the dorm, as oppose to their own personal PCs in their rooms.
OP, why don’t you wait until you you get to campus before making a decision on whether to purchase your own?
Yes, I would buy an inexpensive printer just to have the convenience. Even though my son had free printing access available through some of his memberships in some programs, and there are a few places on campus with free printing (http://www.chem.umd.edu/resources/computingservices), it was good to have not have the restriction of open hours limiting access when doing things at the last minute…
As far as I recall, printing at the libraries is a nominal charge (10 cents?) that can be paid with terrapin express, but again, it’s more of a convenience factor to have your own. Yes, ink is the expensive thing about cheap printers, but if you are the only one using the printer, you are not likely to need replacement ink for a long time.
Something to note: my D (at another university) initially decided to share the cost of an inexpensive printer with her roommate, but when things did not work out well with that roommate, we ended up buying one mid-year when changing rooms, and at that time, the sales were not as good as the back-to-school printer specials in August…