Which Printer for College?

My previous posting talked about which computer is best to send to school with your college-aged kid. When I was done, I realized that I left out one very important peripheral: a printer.

When I was headed off to college back in 1986, you had a choice between dot-matrix or daisy-wheel printers. Nobody had a laser printer as they were just being created. As luck would have it, my Dad was doing advertising for a new laser-printer company and they couldn't afford to pay his fee and so they gave him four units. We were living in San Jose, California at the time and were able to trade a couple of them for new computers at a local high-tech swap meet. I was headed to school with a brand-new IBM PC and a laser printer. As far as I was concerned life was perfect.

I headed off to train at Mt. Hood with the college ski team while my family packed my car and drove it to Utah for my Freshman year. When I got done with a great week of skiing, I headed down to school and met my family. As I was unpacking my stuff with my Dad, he pulled out a brand-new dot-matrix printer. I asked him what happened to my laser printer and he told me he had traded it for a new x286 computer. It was twice as fast as his old PC and I would have to survive with the dot-matrix printer.

I was heart-broken. Sure the dot-matrix printer was what all the other kids were using if they were lucky enough to even have a computer and printer. However I really wanted that laser printer and still regret not having it. So when it came time to get my daughter a printer to go with her new MacBook, I looked at all the options. Today you basically have three types of printers to choose from:

1. Color inkjet
2. Black & white laser
3. Color laser

Color inkjet printers have gotten so cheap that they practically throw one in for free when you buy a new laptop. The quality is pretty good and you have the option of printing in color, not just black & white. The problem is that the cartridges don't hold much ink and they have an uncanny ability to run out during the middle of printing a rather long term-paper.

Black & white laser printers are not much more than the color inkjet printers. However they don't print in color. They do have a toner cartridge that lasts a lot longer though. My black & white laser printer that the kids have used for doing school papers goes about a year between cartridge changes. As for quality, there is not contest. The laser printer is significantly higher quality than the inkjet printers.

Finally there are color laser printers. At the time I was getting ready to send my daughter off to school, they were three to four times as expensive as the black & white laser printers. It was already starting to be a costly month and so I quickly dismissed the option.

In the end my wife and I decided that the black & white laser printer was the best option for our daughter. My wife found an inexpensive HP and purchased it at a local office-supply store. I probably should have been there to help decide on the purchase as the printer only worked with Windows. The night before my daughter was headed off to school, I was stuck trying to figure out how to make a Windows-only printer work with a Mac.

The internet is a wonderful tool and I was able to find help from someone else who had gone through the same pain. We had to download a driver to the computer and another program for the printer. When my daughter turns on the laser printer, she has to download a program from her computer to the printer but then she is able to print.

Now after two years of essays and papers the laser printer is still going strong. Furthermore, several of her roommates have had to rely on her printer late at night when their inkjets have failed or run out of ink. One problem that inkjets have is that the ink can harden and clog the jets. Cleaning the jets at 3am when your paper is due at 8am can turn a sleep-deprived-college coed into a raving lunatic.

So far my daughter and I are happy with the choice of a laser printer for college. If I had the money I would have prefered to send her to school with a color-laser printer so she could produce those stand-above-the-rest papers. However we chose something that was a good value, has worked and continues to work. As for her toner cartridge, the original one is still being used but she has a spare for when the time comes to replace it. Toner cartridges make great Christmas gifts, in case you are interested.