Back To School Technology Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on August 4, 2011 8:55 PM ESTPrinters
The second peripheral every college student should consider buying is a printer. You might have easy access to a printer in your dorm, or the nearest campus lab might be a hike from your apartment. And you might not finish your paper until 3am, and it might be the end of December and your northern campus is getting hammered by a snowstorm—doing that once was enough to motivate me to save up enough money for a printer!
Printers come in three basic types: laser, inkjet, and all-in-ones. All-in-ones combine a copier, scanner, and printer (either a laser or inkjet) into one device. Inkjet printers are usually the least expensive initially, but the cost of printing (the ink cartridges) is usually higher per page than laser printers. Laser printers can sometimes be quite inexpensive, and while toner cartridges cost more than ink cartridges, they last much longer. The majority of printing done by college students is black and white text, and for that reason, I recommend laser printers over inkjet printers. However, if you won’t be printing that much (say, less than 100 pages per month), an inkjet printer is a viable solution. I particularly like all-in-ones because they often aren’t that much more expensive than dedicated printers and being able to copy and scan at home means fewer trips to the computing center or library—and not getting nickle and dimed for those services, as most colleges charge a per-page fee for them.
Canon's PIXMA ip2702 is an inexpensive inkjet at $34 that can handle occasional printing with ease. Spending more money on a dedicated inkjet printer can yield additional features like wireless printing and higher quality picture printing, but durability and reliability general don't start to improve until you shell out $200+ on a prosumer or commercial grade inkjet. For mostly black and white text, cheaper inkjets are just as good as cheap inkjets.
If you'll be printing out hundreds of pages of text per month, Brother's HL-2240D and Samsung's ML-2525 are great budget options. Both can occasionally be found on sale for $50 or less. Neither of these models are built like tanks, but if you take care of them, they'll last for years (I still use a Samsung ML-2010 that I bought in 2006). Like inkjets, spending more money on a laser printer might mean faster printing, wireless printing, and/or more capacious toner cartridges, but again, these features are not necessary for most college students.
Finally, Canon's PIXMA MP495 and imageCLASS MF4350d are inkjet and laser (respectively) all-in-ones. The MP495 is compact in size and also features wireless printing, while the MF4350d is physically larger (though its footprint is not terribly large, unlike many dedicated scanners). The MP495 is currently on sale for less than $60, so unless you're very budget-conscious, the added scanning and copying capabilities are definitely worth the $20 extra compared to the PIXMA ip2702. At less than $100, the MF4250d is very competitively priced compared to other laserjet all-in-ones. Regardless of whether you use a dedicated inkjet or laser printer, or some sort of all-in-one, keep in mind that you can dramatically lower printing costs by refilling ink and toner cartridges.
If you'd rather read papers, book chapters, and assignments on a portable device than printing out sheet after sheet of paper, we cover tablets and ereaders on the next page.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
94 Comments
View All Comments
steven75 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
"and can actually be used for productive work."Translation: All those doctors and Fortune 500 companies using iPads are just using them for playing games.
Evil_Sheep - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
Great back-to-school gear guide, nice to see a focus on students for a change (you know, the ones on a budget eating out of the chef boyardee tin)....unlike the usual chaff we get from other publications where they toss out a list of overpriced frivolous toys and call it a day.The only question is, where are the smartphones? Every student either has one or wants one. This surely has to come before printer recommendations...who still needs those? The Age of Paper is history (the few times a semester you still need to print stuff, you go to the library.)
Also, more 13" (as opposed to 15") laptop recommendations would've been welcome as Apple has really set the bar here...most are coming to see 13" is the perfect compromise between portability and useability.
buzznut - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Curious to note the absence of A8 budget desktop. Seems like a natural for dorm room work/entertainment.Gigantopithecus - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
$140 for the A8-3850 + $75 for the least expensive FM1 board = $215. The X3 CPU & board I recommend here sum to $130. That $85 difference is enough to cover a 6770 after rebate, when it's on sale. I do not think the Llano desktop APUs are priced low enough to dethrone AM3 CPUs as value kings for those interested in gaming.Chron79 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
To me the best $700 laptop on the mass market right now is http://detonator.dynamitedata.com/cgi-bin/redirect...">HP's new A8 offering. Crossfire A8 GPU for gaming goodness, plus a Blu-ray drive, 6gigs RAM, 2 3.0 USBs and 5ish hours of use in a 6lb package. I would hazard a guess and say this is the best value for laptops period atm short of the occasional XPS deal + coupon code. If you want top gaming capability you'll be spending at least $500 more for 1080p screen and top tier DGPUs, but for your normal mobile gamer this A8 packs plenty of punch.Chron79 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
code links disabled I guess - here is the direct:http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Laptop+/...
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Why is college is a black hole of debt? With articles like these it isnt any wonder. All a college student needs is a dm1 with a 64gig SSD and a portable hard drive tucked under their desk. No way would I carry a notebook with all my important documents and notes around with me everywhere if it had a spinning platter hard drive.As for tablets, I spent some time playing with a bunch of different kinds, and the problem with all of them is they are just too damn slow. It is orders of magnitude below what I find acceptable in a pc. An 800MHz AMD duron is faster than these pieces of crap. What gives? What am I missing? How are these things $500? Try bringing up a google map and actually scrolling around... ha! Forget it I'd rather pull my teeth out with pliers.
As you stand there tapping the hell out of the screen wondering why the link wont open, all the sudden poof the link instantly opens and I end up clicking right thru to the link on the next page then i have to wait another 30 seconds for that one to open...
SSquirrel - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I'm really surprised more mention of Apple's Mini, iMac and laptops lines weren't included. Yes they may be more expensive, but considering that 70% of all incoming freshmen are packing Apple gear, it might have been good to include them. Or even just have a separate Mac page for the review.I actually just bought the Mini w/the discrete video and it's been great since picking it up Friday. It's pretty snappy, runs WoW great and the ONLY time I hear it working is when the drive spins up from sleep.
anishannayya - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
I can't believe that you guys forgot the X220 or the X220 tablet by Lenovo.The x220 is essentially a smaller and lighter 420T.
And lets not forgot Windows tablets. I own the X201T, and it is an excellent note-taking tool. One can do wonders with OneNote and a tablet.
Most professors use .PPT. Rather than printing them out (too add drawings and the like), you can import them, and write/draw directly on them.
Those who are math-based majors also have the ability of digitizing their notes.
Of course, all this allows you to be neat, organized, and have everything digital. You only have to carry around one device, especially if you purchase digital editions of your books (or scan them).
Lastly, the best part is that since the X220T is a convertible tablet PC, you can always flip the screen around and get typing (since most can type faster than they can write).
And for the gamers, add in a DIY ViDock, and you have something capable enough to handle modern games at decent settings. It'll have to do until real external solutions become possible.
Belard - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link
The Fractal Core 1000 is a pretty generic looking ugly case, might as well get a real Antec 3000. But the lower height is handy.The HP and compaq cases do look better.
I wouldn't recommend these pre-built systems.
Lenovo desktops have almost NO crap-ware pre-installed. They are clean inside and out and cost the same as an HP pretty much. They have bottom end $350 desktops with a decent X2 AMD for $430 and i5 Core systems at $550.