<p>I am trying to buy a printer for my son for college. I am having trouble finding one that isn't wireless that has decent reviews. I really don't want to spend over $100 because I am not sure how much he will use it, but I don't want it to be a piece of garbage that will stop working in two months either.</p>
<p>Any recommendations?</p>
<p>We went to Office Max or Staples and bought the CHEAPEST printer they had there…I think it was $79. I honestly don’t remember the brand…but I didn’t care. It was used for four years…and then it was given to some other college student when our kid graduated.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure you can get a wireless printer but not use it that way. D2’s is wireless but because she shared it with roommate, they used cable to switch between their computers. He might be somewhere next year where wireless works.</p>
<p>Most, if not all, of the wireless ones can also be locally connected via a USB cable so you should consider wireless ones. Depending on the college he’s going to he might not be in a dorm for all 4 years meaning he’d move out into an apartment and he’d probably find the wireless one more convenient to use so make sure you consider the next 4 years at least rather than just the next year or two.</p>
<p>Consider getting a basic B&W laser printer and save money by not having to buy the expensive ink cartridges. My Brother 2270 (wireless) laser printer has worked well so far although depending on how he wants to use a printer it might be helpful to have an all-in-one that includes a scanner.</p>
<p>I picked up my sons last year on sale for about $60 at Walmart. It was wireless but he didn’t use it that way. He used it a lot and had no problems. Funny, I just asked him and was surprised he remembered it was a Canon Pixima 495. It’s fairly compact which was a good feature in a dorm.</p>
<p>Every wireless printer out there is wired+wireless. Wireless will probably NOT work in a college environment for a number of reasons, so the alternative (rare) is wired network or USB+wireless.</p>
<p>Wrong board, no?</p>
<p>Oops, sorry. I didn’t realize that there was somewhere else I should have posted my question. </p>
<p>I also didn’t know that you could also plug in a wireless printer, so thank you for that information. That will make the search easier.</p>
<p>Go with Brother laser. It’s the cost of ink that will kill later. Brothers let you refill with no name inks.</p>
<p>We picked up two cheap HP Printers at WalMart. They all break after a few years so we went to minimize costs overall. They both still work after several years but we don’t really print that much now.</p>
<p>They had a backup in that they could print at the library for ten cents a page. The costs per page on the HP printer was about seven cents per page. A laser printer is more efficient for high-volume printing but I don’t think that they typical student needs a laser printer.</p>
<p>^^ But laser printers aren’t really more expensive than ink jet printers and I’m fairly sure are less expensive due to not having to buy new ink cartridges all the time. They also print much nicer and don’t clog like ink jets do.</p>
<p>One important point to consider when to buy a printer is the ease of use of the software, especially with the software related to scanning documents. I think Canon scanning software is easy to use. I used HP before and I was disappointed.</p>
<p>I won’t have a laser printer in my house due to toner concerns. I used to maintain a bunch of them and took all of the proper precautions and read all of the warnings.</p>
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<p>Moreover, most laser printers I’ve used…especially the ones from my college days in the '90s tended to have much better build quality/QC than most inkjets and require far less maintenance. </p>
<p>The laser printer I had from undergrad is still running fine to this day and is only on the second cartridge in nearly 20 years of constant usage. Just used it to print some UPS mailing labels this morning. </p>
<p>At one of the startups I worked at where we used the inkjet at around the same rate I used my laser in undergrad and now, the cost of one laser toner cartridge which lasts me around a decade was eaten up in less than 3 months with most inkjets. </p>
<p>That inkjet printer also had many maintenance issues and turned out to be junk…even though it was a higher-end model than what most consumers got. </p>
<p>Moreover, inkjets not only clog…the ink must be used at a steady rate to avoid the cartridge drying out and some inkjet manufacturers deliberately program the driver software to prematurely declare a cartridge empty even when it still has plenty of ink. </p>
<p>IMHO…unless you need to print many high quality color photographs…a laser printer is a much more cost-effective way to go. Especially in the medium-longer term.</p>
<p>If you’re just going to print b & w documents…getting an inkjet is IMHO a “penny wise pound foolish” decision once the TCO of more than a few months is taken into account.</p>
<p>Canon PIXMA MG5220. best printer i’ve ever used. it’s wireless but i have it USB’d or wired into my computer.</p>
<p>Ditto Canon printers. I have had many HP’s and they all fell apart, old to new; I have a Canon MX850 at home (heavy monster of a business class printer) and DD1 has an MX495 or some such $50 multifunction. Not bad. </p>
<p>College kids do not print anywhere as much as we think they do… everything is electronic these days.</p>
<p>Agree with turbo. No need to send a printer. Sent oldest with a printer…she only used it to print out photos she wanted right away for bulletin boards. Did not send a printer with youngest to college. She’s done fine.</p>
<p>I love HP laser printers for fast, quality B&W printing. I’m on my second. The first one, a LaserJetIII, lasted for well over a decade…it may have actually been 15 years. I now have the model that replaced it, which is also much better than any inkjet I’ve encountered for B&W printing, although not quite as good in handling things like card stock as the first one, which was bigger, heavier, and more expensive.</p>
<p>I also have an HP all-in-one photo quality printer, which does a good job on the that sort of thing. Of course, it is slower, the ink cartridges are used up more quickly (and what is more annoying, unevenly by color within a single cartridge) and the ink runs if it gets wet. But it is handy to have a copier/scanner. And the downsides are common to all inkjets that I know of. I’ve had the all-in-one for about6 or 7 years, with no problems.</p>
<p>I use both of them for business and personal printing. I have nothing but good things to say about HP printers.</p>
<p>I don’t think college students really need printers most of the time. If they want one, it is likely that they might “inherit” a cheap basic printer from graduating students. S did, eventually.</p>
<p>I second Consolation’s recommendation of B&W HP laser printers. I used one at work for about 12 years and it was very reliable and the toner cartridges lasted for a long time. Long after the warranty expired, there was a problem with the paper feed and HP sent a free piece (and excellent instructions) to fix it.</p>
<p>I have had a number of printers both for myself and my D and have found the best ones to be by brother. We use the brother mfc J435W at home. It is a wireless / wired one and works great. my D uses an MFC 240C in college and we swear by them both. She has found it really useful to have the scanning ability. They are very good on ink and brother is the only ones I have had that do not clog up the ink jets. Both are under $100 and the ink is quite cheap in comparison to other ie HP</p>
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That’s why for the ink jet printers I moved away from HP, with the single cartridge for all colors, to Epson, with separate cartridges for each color. I also made sure the user interface for the printer allowed me to select ‘black ink only’ to conserve the cartridges even more since if they don’t have that option they often use some of the colors even when the page is only supposed to be black on a white page. I had another weird requirement in that the inks be water-fast since my W uses it to print on fabric and Epson advertised that their inks were the most water-fast. I then did some of my own testing of HP versus Epson versus Canon inks and it’s indeed true that the Epson inks are much more water-fast than the others. Most people won’t care about this point though.</p>
<p>Everyone needs to realize they’re basically giving away the actual printer in order to lock you into buying their ink cartridges and paper which is where they make the profits and they’ve certainly engineered their printers to use as much ink as possible IMO so people will need to replace them. This results in not only spending far more than it seems we should for the ink/paper but also generally poor quality printer mechanisms so they break frequently and are basically throwaway items.</p>
<p>The laser printers seem much better and more reliable - at least the ones I’ve owned which have been both HP and Brother. They’re also much more reasonable now as opposed to the HP laser printers of a decade ago.</p>
<p>When comparing costs people need to consider the real usage costs which includes the cost of ongoing ink cartridge purchases, not to mention hassles with smudgy cartridges, and in the long run IMO laser printers are better. They do need to have the toner cartridge replaced every now and then but not nearly as frequently as ink cartridges and they don’t have the smudging issues.</p>