Best all in one printer for college

Hey everyone!
I was wondering what the best all in one printer is out there on the market- something relatively small (for a dorm) for my notebook. All i need is a simple scanner and printer (and a copier too but I'm assuming that a printer with a scanner can do that automatically). Maybe something less than 100 dollars. I was looking at the HP Photosmart C3180 but I'm a bit skeptical because I know that Hp's drivers tend to be poorly written and more often than not cause problems (If you also have experience with this printer, please share them). Maybe even something compatible with bluetooth technology if possible would be nice.

Thanks a bunch everyone!
Cheers!

 

Shop around for these
Canon Pixma MP180
Epson Stylus Photo RX580

The epson is the best one I have seen around and you might find it for 90-130 price range though MSRP is 150. I will help you look.

I found these based upon your price of 100 if you are willing to higher you can get good ones, but I'd say Epson would be the best bet up to the 200 dollar price range.

Found it on newegg for 115: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828103073

Its a great product a friend of mine has one. Does it all copy, scan, print, prints photos, and you can print directly on cds and dvds. Its a good deal.

 

Get a laser printer since the overall cost would actually be lower. Or an inkjet that can be easily refilled.

 

I just bought a HP C3180 for $64.99 at costco. I'll be using it in my dorm. It scans, copy, memory card reader. Does most of the stuff I'll need it for and was a good price. The HP's drivers worked fine for me.
Also the nice thing about it is that it isn't a huge monster that takes up space. The paper tray can fold up when not needed too. I prefer the bottom loaded types myself vs the top loading. I find that less dust and crap gets into them.

It will mainly be a temp. solution until I get my HP C8180 from the HP Beta Program I participated in. Now that was a wonderful printer! It even had a lightscribe DVD burner with wifi and bluetooth!

 

I second a laser, ink costs and clogged heads will drive you crazy when you're trying to print out long essays on an inkjet. Text quality isn't usually great either, there is some overspray from even the best print head nozzles.

The problem is, any printer under $100 is disposable, and most of the development cost is made up in ink/toner sales. Get a $200-$300 laser from HP, Xerox, or Okidata and you'll have something that will last well beyond college.

 

If you really want a printer that lasts, look for one that uses an Ethernet connection. That way, the I/O can be done in userspace instead of in the kernel. As such, it is less likely to have problems on new 64 bit computers. I have a Magicolor 2430DL and it works flawlessly on my 64 bit PC. Not much good to have a nice printer that will only work on your old PC.
Besides, you can connect a wireless router to the printer and print wirelessly.

 

i also recommend a laser. i brought myself a brother laser printer. i use to have an all in one, but i was sick of having to spend so much for ink.

 

All right everyone- thank you all very much for all of your excellent advice- I just bought the Canon MP210 and it works beautifully. I should warn potential consumers about the HP Photosmart series- I bought that yesterday and ended up returning it today because, as I feared, the software and drivers written for it were complete crap. If only HP could hire some decent programmers. Guess it's too much to ask for. Anyways, my Canon works beautifully- fully recommend it!
Cheers!

 

Hey Mistah,

I am a career college student ( it feels that way! ).
If your schools offers free printing to students in the labs or libraries, I would use that and NOT buy a printer. You are likely paying a technology fee, so milk it for all its worth. I ditched my printer my 2nd year in school, and haven't needed it since ( I am a grad student now ). By ditching the printer I saved around $100 a quater ( $40 per ink and it needed black + color = $80 + misc paper, etc... ) That is assuming I only used 1 set of ink per quarter too, and they will dry up before the next starts.

Just my 2 cents.

 

I am partial to HP Photosmart printers. The quality is always great first off. And more important, I found that the hardware of the printer itself does not fail easily. My dad is a local politician and we found that our photosmart printer worked better for printing mailing addresses on self-seal envelopes than our laser did (the heat and the rollers damaged the envelopes too much). After printing envelopes for 13 hours a day for two weeks on our 3 year old photosmart, the belt that drove the ink-head finally wore out. The guy at Staples couldn't believe that the printer lasted more than a few days at that volume. I was so pleased I replaced it with another photosmart and I have taken it on the road, dropped miscellaneous objects on it and it still works flawlessly.

However I have found the HP scanner drivers a tad finicky when trying to scan at a high resolution. Scanning at the recommended lower resolutions has never ever been a problem for me.

 

Ditto...

That's best way to go. Almost all universities have free printing and it's not like high school where the libraries close @ 3 PM.

 

I just bought a HP Photosmart C5280 and it seems pretty good, prints fast (well compared to my old Deskject 710C), has the media card reader, cd printing, and has one of the highest resolution scanners that I saw when looking at the local Staples. The only downside to it is its a little on the noisy side. But it was a fairly good price at $150CDN

 

I figured i'd try here before i started a new thread, since this is printer related and for college...

My roomate suggested that the three of us that will be living in our room share a single printer wirelessly. I looked online briefly at bestbuy and newegg and couldn't find any printers that touted wireless capability as one of their features. Anyone know of a good printer that the three of us could share wirelessly?

 

t.f. i don't have any suggestions, but if you will have a router you can get a printer with an Ethernet port and share it over the network.

 

I dont know if you can get a decent one for under $100 that isnt refurbished, but here is one that is refurbished with a standard warranty

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Brother_MFC_210C/EMFC210C/H68164/pricegrabber/

 

thanks for the suggestion dragoneye... any one else know of any wireless printers?

 

could anybody tell me what is the best college printer if price is not a factor? I would like one that is all-in-one that has color, copy, scan, and perferably even fax. Would also be nice if the printer can be manually calibrated so it wouldn't wake me up in the middle of the night.

 

Yeah, I think HP is still selling wireless print servers for their printers that have the capability to house them. It's really not worth the cost, though, you'll have a lot more choices if you use the wireless router/AP as a gateway to the wired network with the printer on it. Then you have the three best options in my mind, lasers from HP, Xerox, and Okidata.

 

Price is no object whatsoever? How about a Xerox Doc242?

I'd probably look at the Xerox Phaser 8560MFP. They're very quiet, reliable, and are most definitely not disposable. Ink costs are very reasonable as well, and image quality is typically a good price range higher than you pay for these days. Our old 860DP at work doesn't have the best print quality and runs pretty loud (both much improved upon recently), but it's been running at a good 2500 impressions per month for... I don't know, 5 or 7 years now I think (I might be a bit off). It's needed a couple maintenance kits, but it's running as well as ever.

But honestly, even though you're into a price range where you can get a good multifunction, I still suggest keeping the scan and print sectors separate. Even though it's not disposable, you still have to repair one or the other or buy both if one fails. Either that or have a rather large machine that doesn't do all it's footprint should offer.

 

I looked at the 8560MFP. It looks good, but seems a bit big for a dorm. I was also hoping for a price under $1000. Any other suggestions?