<p>[ul]Laptop alone
[<em>]Laptop w/ external monitor in room (docking station for full size keyboard?)
[</em>]Desktop only
[*]Do you need your own printer?[/ul]</p>
<p>You probably don’t want desktop only. It’s nice to be able to do work outside your room/athena clusters.</p>
<p>I’ve had only a laptop for 3 years now and gotten by just fine. I got myself a little USB mouse and I’m even too lazy to plug that in so forget an external monitor. Docking stations seem to be appealing. Esp if your battery life is not great and you’d prefer to leave it plugged in anyhow when you’re in your room. It’s kinda like a one stop shop for all your computer’s external needs (ethernet, etc), and it seems kinda nice. That said it takes up space and costs money. I go without.</p>
<p>Having your own printer is inexpensive and really convenient. I’d recommend it. You can grab free athena paper from the clusters. I’m going without a printer this summer after a year with, and even being 20 ft from the student center it’s still this incredible potential barrier to get anything printed.</p>
<p>== pebbles</p>
<p>Some of the dorms have Athena printers, though, and so it’s not always terribly inconvenient not to have a printer. My printer died halfway through sophomore year and I never bothered replacing it.</p>
<p>I had just a laptop for my first two years, then I got a desktop at the beginning of junior year and borrowed my boyfriend’s laptop when I needed one. I felt both situations worked pretty well for me.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much this will help you, but here’s a blog post on laptops:</p>
<p>[MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “Laptops!”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/learning/libraries_facilities_computing/laptops.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/learning/libraries_facilities_computing/laptops.shtml)</p>
<p>:p You’re not -supposed- to take paper from the clusters.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t get this rule - you’re saving them the ink, right? What difference does it make?</p>
<p>I mean, uh, I <em>never</em> take Athena paper.</p>
<p>I’ve never even heard of this rule. No one has ever tried to stop me either</p>
<p>Oh, I’ve heard the rule.</p>
<p>(I mean, can I claim ignorance if caught?)</p>
<p>
Well, actually, I believe it’s because, on average, clusters already spend MUCH more money on paper than on ink. Mix in people taking paper, and the problem only escalates. It’s always been a matter of saving paper rather than ink, I think.</p>
<p>I did not use a single sheet of lined paper last year. All of my studying, PSETS, everything was done on athena paper. </p>
<p>Also printing things from an athena cluster is much faster if you just print it from your room to the printers in the cluster. I very highly recommend learning how to use Athena in general when you get to campus (which starts with learning how to work with *nix environments). Otherwise it’s like chopping off one of your big toes. Sure you’ll be able to get through, but it’ll be annoying the whole way through.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or, if you live in EC or (to a lesser extent) Senior Haus, you’re right near 66, which has the 66-0 cluster (which has two printers).</p>
<p>
INCLUDING ZEPHYR.</p>
<p>
Yeah, but paper-wise it’d be the same either way. My essay won’t get longer if I print it in my dorm - it’s the same amount of paper in a dorm vs at a cluster. But in a dorm, with my own printer, they still save on ink. Maybe I’m missing something?</p>
<p>What do you guys mean by “taking Athena paper”? Is it taking blank paper from the printer, or taking the Athena covers that have the cool graph paper and music paper?</p>
<p>
I meant using Athena paper in your own printer. Of course, using your own paper AND printer saves the Athena clusters paper AND ink, but what they save in ink when you take their paper but use your own printer is nullified (and more) by what they lose in paper.</p>
<p>
The former.</p>
<p>I should read through a thread before I post.</p>
<p>^ above, you’re missing Piper’s point. If I’m out of paper in my printer I don’t think, oh, I better go out and buy more paper at staples and pronto, I think, I’ll just print in athena. That’s what it’s there for. So in the end, unless you’re building a bonfire with athena paper, how much paper you take would be generally less than or equal to how much paper you’d have used up in athena anyhow. Considering people will generally be more wasteful with athena paper (ink issue and all), my guess is it’s less.</p>
<p>If you were really serious about saving paper, MIT facilities, you’d set some sort of daily/weekly printing limit. It’s not the people taking a package of paper twice a semester that you ought to be going after, it’s those schmucks getting their online textbooks bound.</p>
<p>^
Also, we should go after the paper who print online pictures on separate pieces of paper. They should learn how to put everything on one piece of paper.</p>