<p>I'm trying to decide whether to purchase a color inkjet printer vs. a black and white laser printer for D's dorm room. Do students need to do much color printing? If so, can they use their 250 free prints per semester on color printers in the computer labs? I'd appreciate anyone's opinion and/or experiences. Thanks.</p>
<p>I struggled with this all summer and finally went with a black and white laser printer. Speed of printing, quality of print and cost of ink were my main reasons. And a lot of newer color printers completely stop printing when a single color cartridge is out of ink and the cost of those cartridges is pretty high.</p>
<p>I think it depends a bit on the major, too. If they are going to be printing lots of graphs or things that require color, go with the color printer and just resign yourself to the ink cost. If they are going to mostly be doing English papers, or history papers, whatever, black ink only should be fine. They can use local resources for that occassional color print need, if not even a generous roommate/floormate.</p>
<p>Did a little research on printer ink and found that some are cheaper than others. Lexmark, I believe, came ot the least expensive, HP the most expensive. Bought a 3 in 1 printer so he can copy notes and scan book pages and other documents into PDFs if necessary (the software to do this from any scanner is built into the Preview App in Mac OS X, don’t know about Windows OS machines).</p>
<p>To be honest, many undergrads here buy a printer freshman year, use it until the ink runs out, and then never buy another cartridge. We have print stations on campus that work on print credit already loaded onto splashcards. If you/your student is the type of person who won’t take the 5 extra minutes before class to go print out a paper, then a printer is a good option. However, most people find that ink is very expensive and choose not to use their own.</p>
<p>S1 found having his own printer and copier to be invaluable. He liked proofreading from printed text rather than the computer display. (Dad did buy him a year’s supply of cartridges every year, however.)</p>
<p>Thanks to all four of you for these interesting perspectives. Will discuss with D tomorrow during our flights to NOLA. (Can’t believe that the adventure is finally beginning.)</p>