<p>Is it useful to take a printer to college? Or will it just take up space and serve no real purpose?</p>
<p>If your school doesn't have one of those programs that gives you free and CONVENIENT printing, a printer is essential. I used my printer daily, some times printing 100 pages in a day. I would not have wanted to pay the school printing prices, or wait for a printer at one of the computer clusters.</p>
<p>It's nice to have ONE printer in your room. If you're living in a suite, have only one person get a printer. The only catch is the replacement of ink. I was anal about this and so each time someone printed something we wrote down how many pages we printed and just kept a talley. Then when we went to buy ink we each paid our percentages. It would have been really annoying if I had to pay an equal portion being that print like 5-10 pages a month compared to my roommates hundreds of pages. Considering it was like $70 to replace all the ink tanks, I was glad we kept track. We replaced the set twice during the year but like I said, my roommate prints TONS of stuff.</p>
<p>Even with free printing, my son found it really convenient to have a printer in his room. Actually, it was a printer/scanner and he actually used the scanner a lot.</p>
<p>You can sometimes get them free (or almost free) with your computer purchase. I think we got his at Office Depot when they were selling discontinued models at huge discounts. Some are very narrow and can easily fit on a shelf above your desk.</p>
<p>A printer is an essential in my mind. It'd be such a hassle to put a paper on my jump drive, wait in line at a computer lab to print it out, then find a working stapler.. plus we have a sheet-limit here - 100 pages per quarter, after that they charge 5 cents per sheet printed.</p>
<p>I used my printer alot, and when I ran out of ink, I had to use the labs on-campus and it was such a hassle while I waited for my ink to be shipped from Dell. My campus charges 6 cents for every sheet you print, so it adds up too.</p>
<p>I thought I would go to the library to print for free. However, my parents wanted a printer in my room. I found it extremely convenient to have one in your room. You need your own printer! Color printers are near useless in college. If you are afraid of running out of ink, I suggest laser printers.</p>
<p>You need an HP LaserJet 1022 in your room. Small, quiet, fast, and prints 5000 pages per toner. Toner is $70, or much less than a bunch of ink cartridges. The printer is $200 but well worth it. Over 4 years it pays for itself.</p>
<p>A printer is worth it for sure. When you are finishing final papers at 3 am you don't want to go look for a printer</p>
<p>Get a scanner/printer combo ;) . Also, the color came in pretty handy for reports with illustrations, graphs, etc.</p>
<p>I'm debating on whether to get a B/W laser or combo, as the school I'm going to has pretty much unlimited printing from their B/W lasers. I'll probably get a combo in the end.</p>
<p>I'd get a laser. They're so much more cost effective (over the long run), faster, and they print higher quality. You won't need color for the most part except for a diagram here or there and when you would need it, the quality from cheap inkjets is so low that you'd want to use a school printer anyway.</p>
<p>Thanks! I get a free printer because of i'm getting a laptop deal thing, so thanks a lot for the advice!</p>
<p>Not sure how handy this may be in college but I know personally I could not have been any more grateful to have the printer I have right now. It's a 4-in-1 printer (copy, scan, fax, and print). I needed to actually fax a couple of documents to some schools and mailing it would have been too slow. On top of that my dad had the documents I needed. So I had him fax the documents to me and I was able to fax it back to the schools the same day. On top of that I'm able to make backup copies of most documents I need two copies of. Bad thing is that this printer runs out of ink quickly so I have to keep reordering the cartridges which can get pretty expensive. (I actually have two printers at home. The one I don't use is an Epson regular color printer but I stopped using it because it needed 4 cartridges and they were so expensive.) Maybe the future holds a 4-in-1 laserjet printer for me.</p>
<p>Free is good, celebrian! :)</p>
<p>If any of you are getting a Dell computer, they offer printers also; however, you do have to mail away for them. If there is a choice, I'd get a common brand of printer so you can get ink cartridges easily at a number of different stores.</p>
<p>Just for a free printer / Scanner with my macbook pro....not a bad deal.</p>
<p>^^^^ are you saying u got a free printer+scanner combo ith ur macbook pro....how???</p>
<p>Yep. Apple has a $100 rebate on a printer with a computer purchase, and as I'm getting the 99.95 dollar model (it's the one I use at home anyways and I've never had problems with it) it's essentially free. I think it's a great printer for the price, especially being a scanner/copier/printer combo.</p>