PaulinMaryland said:
Just set an airport express with WPA and MAC filter. I doubt they will do anything to her because shes a girl. If they find me, asian male, with a router, I would be more likely be in trouble.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
No routers in a college dorm room?
- Thread starter PaulinMaryland
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Just set an airport express with WPA and MAC filter. I doubt they will do anything to her because shes a girl. If they find me, asian male, with a router, I would be more likely be in trouble.
PaulinMaryland said:
As was mentioned above, she'd have to go fetch the hardcopy anyway.
A good many labs at some schools have public printers that you can print from via any laptop that can get on the campus wireless. Wired also means the printer can be plugged into someone else's machine to print, as opposed to fuddling with wireless settings.
If you are dead set on spending money, do yourself and her a favor and buy a monochrome laser printer. Inkjets/bubblejets are absolute garbage. And no, she won't need a color printer unless she's an art student (and doubtful even then - most schools have such facilities for students that need them).
Does she regularly proofread with hard copy? If she's taking her hands off the keys anyway, I don't see the harm in a short stroll.
Hell, if she proofreads at all she'd be a step above most undergrads.
ph0rk said:
A nice brother laser printer is good, running around $130 with tonner about $70 I think. I haven't bought my yet.
ph0rk said:
Have you seen modern inkjet printouts? I have an HP OfficeJet 7310xi that produces better quality black and white output than my Brother HL1440 laser printer. Yeah, the Brother is cheaper per page, but I bought it for high quality business documents, and have found that I use the HP when I want truly high quality output.
(The Brother is excellent, the HP is just better.)
ehurtley said:
HP lasers are great, use them at school here and the OfficeJets are nice. However we are talking about a student printing out last minute papers for an 8am class.
Color inkjets
Once you've grown up with color printing, it's hard to go to black-only. I buy HP business-class color inkjets that use four separate large inkwells and (in more recent models) four replaceable heads. Very affordable cost per page, and because they're business-class, acceptably quick. I buy clone-brand color inks, but I stick with HP for black ink because it's pigment-based and won't run.
So which printer did I order her? The HP Business Inkjet 2300DTN, new, for $250 shipped and a 3-year Square Trade warranty for $15. Autoduplexing, 650-sheet capacity, and fast. If she runs out of ink, our family's HP CP1700D uses the same ink and heads and I can get them to her in an hour.
Since the 2300DTN includes a wired Ethernet card, that will give me one more option. But it doesn't exactly make printing wireless. I've started another thread in this forum to ask whether anyone knows of a Bluetooth printer adapter that's Version 2.0 like the MacBook.
Once you've grown up with color printing, it's hard to go to black-only. I buy HP business-class color inkjets that use four separate large inkwells and (in more recent models) four replaceable heads. Very affordable cost per page, and because they're business-class, acceptably quick. I buy clone-brand color inks, but I stick with HP for black ink because it's pigment-based and won't run.
So which printer did I order her? The HP Business Inkjet 2300DTN, new, for $250 shipped and a 3-year Square Trade warranty for $15. Autoduplexing, 650-sheet capacity, and fast. If she runs out of ink, our family's HP CP1700D uses the same ink and heads and I can get them to her in an hour.
Since the 2300DTN includes a wired Ethernet card, that will give me one more option. But it doesn't exactly make printing wireless. I've started another thread in this forum to ask whether anyone knows of a Bluetooth printer adapter that's Version 2.0 like the MacBook.
set it up CORRECTLY
Many dorms now have wirelessm but if your's does not, you should be able to set up a wireless router without much problem.
1) make sure your neighbors don't already have one. If they do, use theirs
2) if you set it up, make sure that campus network is pluged into the WAN or INTERNET port. You'll get caught very quickly if you use the wrong port and start handing out ip address over the compus network
3) use NAT so that all of your computers use only one campus IP address
4) turn off the SSID Broadcast, otherwise known as SSID beacon, or in the case of Apple's equpment: "create a closed network"
Many dorms now have wirelessm but if your's does not, you should be able to set up a wireless router without much problem.
1) make sure your neighbors don't already have one. If they do, use theirs
2) if you set it up, make sure that campus network is pluged into the WAN or INTERNET port. You'll get caught very quickly if you use the wrong port and start handing out ip address over the compus network
3) use NAT so that all of your computers use only one campus IP address
4) turn off the SSID Broadcast, otherwise known as SSID beacon, or in the case of Apple's equpment: "create a closed network"
ehurtley said:
I have a Samsung ML-1450. Believe me, you do -not- want to be in inkjet land when draft copy #17 of your thesis is printing. In my experience a decent laser is more trouble free than inkjets, in addition to the year+ of starter toner. Someone going to college is going to be stuck with that printer for 5 years or more - I hope it lasts.
Pretty documents are nice. Not nice enough to save shoddy work, but still nice, if you get me
Edit: And yes, I've seen many modern inkjet printouts. And replaced the printers. And fixed the jams. And, finally, convinced the muddled faculty member to budget for a damn laser.
ph0rk said:I have a Samsung ML-1450. Believe me, you do -not- want to be in inkjet land when draft copy #17 of your thesis is printing. In my experience a decent laser is more trouble free than inkjets, in addition to the year+ of starter toner. Someone going to college is going to be stuck with that printer for 5 years or more - I hope it lasts.
Pretty documents are nice. Not nice enough to save shoddy work, but still nice, if you get me
Edit: And yes, I've seen many modern inkjet printouts. And replaced the printers. And fixed the jams. And, finally, convinced the muddled faculty member to budget for a damn laser.
Ah, yes... Forgot about the 'maintenance' part of it. (Combined with the 'quick printout'.) Although for a single page, my HP beats my Brother. The Brother wins hands-down if printing more than one page, though.
That said, I've had more problems with Brother products than with HP products. Especially the mid-level or higher HPs. I wouldn't trust any $50 printer, and would barely trust a $100 printer, regardless of manufacturer.
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, too lazy to read 3 pages of posts. Anyways, my college had the same rule, because routers on the network would start handing out their own (192.168.xxx.xxx, etc) IPs to other computers on the network and it became a huge mess and usually took down a good portion of the dorm's network until IT found the guy responsible and shut off his ethernet port. What I did, was disable DHCP on the router, so it just acted like a switch. Any computer that connected to it either via wired or wireless connection was given a campus IP as if the computer was plugged directly into the ethernet port in the dorm rooms.
I'm going to Purdue this fall and not only do they allow routers to be set up in your room, but they even allow wireless routers as long as you use MAC filtering and encryption. That made me really happy as I have about 4 or 5 devices to hook up to the internet.
I started this thread; here's the promised update.
My daughter Vicki's university--the University of Maryland at College Park--provides wireless networking most everywhere...EXCEPT in the dorm rooms. I had brought along a couple CAT5e cables, but both RJ45 jacks were located on the opposite wall from Vicki's desk. I would need a 20-foot cable if the cable would be buried under the throw rug or a 35-foot cable if she preferred to snake it along the walls so no one would step on it. I had to return the next day with the 50-footer from my home PC. I'll bet that hundreds of students were as unprepared as I was. Note to university: Please inform incoming students that they might want to bring a long run of Ethernet cable.
Now for the wireless part: Vicki decided that she wouldn't "need" wireless access. "But what if you wan to cruise or I.M. when you're lying in the top bunk bed?" I asked. "I'll just drag the cable up there; it's plenty long."
Vicki's roommate didn't bring a printer. I pointed out that we could connect our printer to the AirPort Extreme so that both girls could at least print wirelessly. But Vicki and her roommate replied that it would be no big deal to switch the USB cable to the roommate's computer when the roommate needed to print.
In the end, I went home with the AirPort Extreme.
I did put the question of wireless routers to the upperclass student manning at the front desk. He cautioned that "If I.T. finds your wireless router, they'll take away your network access for the rest of th e year." I asked him whether that's enforced; he said he didn't know.
My daughter Vicki's university--the University of Maryland at College Park--provides wireless networking most everywhere...EXCEPT in the dorm rooms. I had brought along a couple CAT5e cables, but both RJ45 jacks were located on the opposite wall from Vicki's desk. I would need a 20-foot cable if the cable would be buried under the throw rug or a 35-foot cable if she preferred to snake it along the walls so no one would step on it. I had to return the next day with the 50-footer from my home PC. I'll bet that hundreds of students were as unprepared as I was. Note to university: Please inform incoming students that they might want to bring a long run of Ethernet cable.
Now for the wireless part: Vicki decided that she wouldn't "need" wireless access. "But what if you wan to cruise or I.M. when you're lying in the top bunk bed?" I asked. "I'll just drag the cable up there; it's plenty long."
Vicki's roommate didn't bring a printer. I pointed out that we could connect our printer to the AirPort Extreme so that both girls could at least print wirelessly. But Vicki and her roommate replied that it would be no big deal to switch the USB cable to the roommate's computer when the roommate needed to print.
In the end, I went home with the AirPort Extreme.
I did put the question of wireless routers to the upperclass student manning at the front desk. He cautioned that "If I.T. finds your wireless router, they'll take away your network access for the rest of th e year." I asked him whether that's enforced; he said he didn't know.
This girl is going to be hit HARD by the freshman 15 if she's too lazy plug in a USB cable maybe once a day.
Yes, Nuc, I believe you can. The roommate's savvy 4th-year brother was there and was explaining to me in great detail how it would be a piece of cake (for him) to set up the router so that it would be undetectable. I don't know why, but my family members often stay wedded to their original misgivings.Nuc said:
Vicki may rethink her plan to use a cabled CAT5e cable the first time her roommate gets out of bed in the middle of the night and walks into the cable. Or maybe Vicki will be careful to drape the cable out of the way.
I also offered to use a wired router (which I had conveniently brought along) to keep one cable routed to the desk, another routed to the upper bunk bed. Vicki's reply: "No more cables!"
Many Colleges, including mine. Don't like their students t bring routers because they can't keep track of what you are doing or control virus outbreaks. Many schools log computers MAC addresses and behind a router they only see the MAC address of the router.
Besides if you need to connect multiple computers. Buy an ethernet hub, its cheaper than a router and in a college campus it works as well as a router.
Besides if you need to connect multiple computers. Buy an ethernet hub, its cheaper than a router and in a college campus it works as well as a router.
When I lived in the dorms, I didn't even have a printer. Not that I didn't have the option to buy it, but the university gives free 500 (and you can ask for more) prints per quarter (shorter than semester). I figured that since I'll be printing out lecture notes and academic articles it might as well be on the school's dime.... but it's probably on me anyway since tuition is so high. Still, my roommate had a printer, and if I didn't feel like going down to the lab I'd just print from her and a USB switching is not a big deal. Not even worth mentioning.
She's going to have to deal with plugging things into her laptop anyway. When I was in the dorms, I loved to sit on my bed with my computer on my stomach. When the battery was low, you have to plug it in. If you wanted to listen to music really really loud with your door open (like so many of us) then you'd have to plug it in. It's really not that big of a problem.
Although once I moved out of the dorms, wireless would have been nice. We have a router for wireless internet which is labeled "linksys." She would appreciate airport express once she moves out. Having the desk wire free is always a plus.
She's going to have to deal with plugging things into her laptop anyway. When I was in the dorms, I loved to sit on my bed with my computer on my stomach. When the battery was low, you have to plug it in. If you wanted to listen to music really really loud with your door open (like so many of us) then you'd have to plug it in. It's really not that big of a problem.
Although once I moved out of the dorms, wireless would have been nice. We have a router for wireless internet which is labeled "linksys." She would appreciate airport express once she moves out. Having the desk wire free is always a plus.
not sure how effectively they enforce this
I used a wireless router for my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Minnesota knowing that they did not allow them, and I never once had any kind of retaliation from the University because of it. My RA always looked the other way, I mean what did he care? I don't think it has anything to do with all the wireless networks that would interfere with themselves, the restrictions exist because routers effectively make one ethernet port into many, providing possible connections to non-students, and since people do not generally know how to enable security measures on them, viruses and worms are a huge vulnerability (not for macs, however)
PaulinMaryland said:
I used a wireless router for my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Minnesota knowing that they did not allow them, and I never once had any kind of retaliation from the University because of it. My RA always looked the other way, I mean what did he care? I don't think it has anything to do with all the wireless networks that would interfere with themselves, the restrictions exist because routers effectively make one ethernet port into many, providing possible connections to non-students, and since people do not generally know how to enable security measures on them, viruses and worms are a huge vulnerability (not for macs, however)
PaulinMaryland said:
No offense, but your daughter sounds spoiled and lazy. You wouldn't have to plug it in when you "might" need it. You plug it in when you DO need it. Is it really that much of an inconvienience?
vand0576 said:
Actually, the daughter sounds entirely reasonable. PaulinMaryland seems to be the one worried about her being inconvenienced.
She's in college now...it's time to let go and let her make her own decisions. If she asks for help, by all means give it to her, but it sounds like you're working awfully hard to convince her that things should be done the way you think they should.