Hey guys is it cheaper to bring your own printer or use the university's printers? Mine is a multi-functional laser colour printer. Also, what are the costs for printing using the university's printers?
Thanks!

Originally Posted by henry4399

Hey guys is it cheaper to bring your own printer or use the university's printers? Mine is a multi-functional laser colour printer. Also, what are the costs for printing using the university's printers?
Thanks!

The cost depends on how much you will print as well as how much the toner for your printer costs (and if you will need to change the toner)

Personally I didn't print any lecture slides and I got by 2 years without having to change the toner on my B&W laser printer.

MSU has Underground for printing: http://www.msumcmaster.ca/underground/priceList.htm

The libraries have printers as well. The website isn't loading right now but this should be the link: http://library.mcmaster.ca/equipment/copying

Bring your own.
Also, pro-tip: BUY INK ON EBAY! (I get a full pack [3 colour + 1 black] for ~7$ whereas to buy the OEM its ~15$ per cartridge)

I suggest getting your own printer.

I am someone who does not enjoy looking at my computer for notes, so I print out the slides all the time.

When my printer broke down in the middle of the year, I found it tedious always having to go to the library to print out notes.

Suggest getting a LASER printer (lasts longer/ more efficient). Toner is pricey though..

youll hate having to go somewhere to print rather than printing in your room and being done with it

i always had a printer in my room and would always imagine how i felt if i just wrote my essay for the last few hours, ended at 2am, and then would have to go get dressed, go outside at winter (its cold at mac for 6/8 months) and walk to print, then walk back, undress, shower, sleep

rather than, finish, print, sleep.

get a printer, trust me, theres no debate on this

definitely get a printer, cause then when you live off campus youll have one with you. imagine finishing an assignment or needing to print something important right before a class/a due date, & youre running late.. it would suck having to run to the library or underground and waiting to print something..

I went halfsies on my printer with my roommate back in the day. The issue some people will have is, who gets the printer when you go your separate ways?

We had a simple system: We bought a $60 printer and paid $30 a piece (give or take some cents), and approximately 3 sets of BW ink for a total of $70 ($35 a piece), with about half a cartridge left at the end. Whoever wanted the printer would have to reimburse the other person at the end of the year, for the printer and an estimate of the proportion of ink they didn't use...and if nobody wanted it, we would donate the printer.

We were both cheap and too lazy to work out who used how much ink, so we wound up donating it.

Does the university have scanners that students can use?

If only for the convenience, bring your own printer. It's really annoying to have to go to the library to print something, especially if you want to print after the libraries are closed.

Bring your own , save yourself the time and stress

Originally Posted by jitnikovi

youll hate having to go somewhere to print rather than printing in your room and being done with it

i always had a printer in my room and would always imagine how i felt if i just wrote my essay for the last few hours, ended at 2am, and then would have to go get dressed, go outside at winter (its cold at mac for 6/8 months) and walk to print, then walk back, undress, shower, sleep

rather than, finish, print, sleep.

get a printer, trust me, theres no debate on this

But why do you have to print essays in the first place? Can't you just email it to your prof?

Originally Posted by Alexmahone

But why do you have to print essays in the first place? Can't you just email it to your prof?

Most profs that I've encountered don't accept e-copies. It's typically TAs that mark papers so it's easier to have a physical copy to distribute to them.

I would really recommend getting a laser printer as the other posters have suggested. For one thing, you'll need to replace your toner maybe once a year and that's if you print an enormous amount. Turn your print quality settings to the lowest possible so you're not wasting ink on high resolution prints if you can avoid it.

I know a lot of people say you can just print on campus. But when you put that assignment off to the last minute (and you will) and the libraries are closed (as they will be) and the UnderGround isn't open (as it won't be), you'll appreciate having a printer.

I once printed 50 pages for somebody who needed to hand in an assignment and had printer problems; no other campus printer was open in time for her class. It's also a lot more convenient for other things (e.g. labs, lecture notes, summaries, etc)

My advice... buy a LASER PRINTER. Reason: Don't have to buy 4-cartridge ink which is expensive for all those colours, and the black cartridges are usually small and won't last long and then you have to go back and buy another $30-40 black cartridge. Waste of money. PLUS the BIGGEST annoyance with inkjet is that you CAN NOT HIGHLIGHT printouts. This is a huge pain when it comes to studying and trying to print off your course notes so you can review them and highlight stuff. The ink from an inkjet will smear when you highlight it while the ink from laser dries instantly so you can highlight all you want.

So the next big question I usually get asked is... well what if I have to print colour? (Laser only prints black and white.. at least the more affordable ones). The answer is simple... 95% of everything you print while at McMaster will be Black and White. Reports, essays, assignments, whatever. The only thing that will be in colour is usually just your cover page (if you want to get fancy) or pages with colour graphs on them if you're in a business class or something like that. IF you need to print colour, then just bring the pages that have colour on them down to the Underground Print/Copy Center in the Student Centre Basement... pay your 50 cents a sheet, and be done with it. Or, go down the street in Westdale to the UPS STORE and you can get colour prints cheap there too, and they are open later.

Finally, the last reason why getting your own printer is important... last minute prints. As another user mentioned in this thread, you will be running around last minute to print things and there's nothing worse than realizing you had to print off an essay for a tutorial class or an assignment you forgot to print out, and it's 10 minutes before class starts and you dont have a printer in your room. I've done it before, you stay up really late to finish an assignment, and then don't have time to print it till the next morning... and the library isn't open and your class is early and about to start and you're freaking out. You'll have to run down to the library once it opens, make sure there's money in your account, login to a computer (if there's one available which is rare during busy times of the day), print, then log off and run to class. It's stressful and usually takes about 15 minutes or longer depending on where your class is located on campus. OR you can also print in any of the UTS (University Technology Services) Labs which are located in most of the main buildings, but they have a separate payment system that you'll need to have topped up. The problem (at least when I was at McMaster) was that you have to PRE-PAY to print. So your account when you login to a computer in UTS will have $x.xx on it. If you don't have enough to print your 10 page assignment... then you'll have to refill your account, which isn't instant.

The amount of money you'll save with a laser printer is well worth it. You can get a Brother laser printer for around $80. I bought mine at Tri-Star Computer which is just down the street from McMaster (look it up on Google Maps). It comes with half a toner already pre-filled and that lasted me the entire school year and longer... honestly. I've only replaced it once in 4 years. Laser printers are amazing, the toner lasts a long time. Plus they print really fast.

You can also get one at TigerDirect in Burlington if you want to take a quick drive:
Here's a more expensive one cause it has WIFI built in (you can wirelessly print from your laptop to the printer): http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...728&CatId=2711 ($79.99)

Also read this thread for more:
http://www.macinsiders.com/showthrea...ome-34918.html