Printer for college & flash memory question

Ok, I'm looking for a multipurpose printer for university this coming August since I mostly print from the printer on my father's desktop, and I can't take that with me so...

My budget is pretty flexible with a $150-70ish cap, though of course something within the $100 range is preferred.
I need it mostly just for printing word documents, but I also need a scanner/copy function and something that can print decent small photo prints (4x6 size, usually).
A note on my printing usage however, is that I print alot. I have various pdfs that are upwards of 100pgs long that I've been meaning to get around to printing but haven't so I don't want anything too fragile.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I don't have any particular brand loyalties, so whatever is well-priced and reliable is preferred.

Also, my flash memory question is that I've taken note of the amazing prices on the 8gb and 16gb flash drives on newegg and was wondering if anyone could tell me how long those last?
I've read responses saying that flash memory is a poor investments as SSDs because they die after ~5years because of constant writing/rewriting but I've also read that the actual scenario is something like 140years at 50GB a day.
If I'm using my flash drive a lot, for example to transfer numerous, large files from one computer to another (repeatedly), so alot of writing and erasing, will this be highly detrimental to the life of the drive?
I wanted to buy one of the flash drives since it's a lot cheaper than investing in an external hard disk, which is what I was originally going to do so any help on the matter is greatly appreciated


Thanks! Sorry for such a long post.

 

SLC SSDs are much more reliable than HDs and have been used for many years but mostly military and government use due to the steep price.

 

For the big documents print in the computer lab.

 

@leaftye: lol, I'm ashamed to say I don't know anything about refilling ink cartridges. What's that entail?
And yeah, I am pretty concerned about reliability. I'm a 17-year old girl with no job paying for all of this out of pocket and like I said, I'll be starting college in the fall so I'd very much like to know that what I'm paying for isn't going to crap out on me in the near future if I push it too hard.

@nizzy: that wouldn't be very economical. not all colleges offer free printing, you know.

EDIT: also, leafteye I didn't mean that I had various PDFs amounting to 100pgs, I meant that I had many various PDFs with hundreds of pages; meaning thousands total.

 

Thousands of pages is going to be expensive, period. Especially for ink. A laser is going to be more economical for that. And much faster. As to reliability, personal experience, not necessarily a recommendation just our experience, HP OfficeJets are designed for lots of hard use. Our G-85 has well over 50,000 pages run through and still kicking. And fairly fast for an ink jet printer, but lasers are almost always faster.

Sandisk Cruzer thumb drives have a retractable USB connector which I have found very convenient. I keep some extremely important records on one, although I back that one up to all 3 of my other computers whenever I make changes in the spreadsheets. But over a year of use 3 or 4 times a week and using on 3 different puters tells me it's pretty solid.

 

If you're going to be printing that much quantity, I'd go with a laser printer and deal with printing photos either with another model, or elsewhere. You'll go through buckets of money buying inkjet cartridges with those needs.

I bought an HP laserjet 1020 at the beginning of last school year, since I was going to be printing in quantity, and it was the best investment I ever made. Fast, fast printing, great quality, and it lasted me and my sister (first year law school student, and i'm a first year screenwriting grad) the entire school year and into this summer before we had to replace the cartridge. We printed quite a lot of assignments, guides, scripts, etc etc.

I would highly recommend a laserjet printer (I paid $100 for mine) and maybe invest in a smallish photo printer if you do that often. I think my mom got a nice kodak one for $100 or so. Cartridges for inkjet are $40+ and you bust through them so quickly, it's not worth it.

Color laserjets of quality are usually $300+.

 

You can get a decent monochrome laserjet for less than $50. Check Slickdeals and FatWallet. The pickup a cheap inkjet for pictures.