Among the various gizmos and gadgets you'll be sending your student back to school with, a printer is probably close to the top of your list. But while you're looking for a practical and inexpensive printer for your beloved academic, they're hankering for that uber-cool photo printer for spitting out those unforgettable on- and off-campus moments with their buds. A lost cause, you think? Well, Virginia, there is a compromise: a photo multifunction printer (MFP). Multifunction printers can scan, print, and copy (and some can even offer faxing capabilities). Photo MFPs let you print directly from your digital cameras and/or memory cards, letting you bypass the need for a computer for photo printing.

The photo MFPs in our roundup should be more than adequate for your student's back-to-school needs. All five of these inkjet-based printers come in at $300 or less (which, considering their years of use, makes them both a bargain and sound investment) and each offer copying, scanning, and printing features. The Lexmark P4350 All-In-One and HP PSC 1610 All-In-One came in as the least expensive at $130.

All five can print photos directly from a PictBridge camera and memory cards. Both the Epson Stylus RX620 and Canon Pixma MP760 Photo All-in-One add a transparency adapter, allowing them to both scan and print directly from film strips or transparencies. While all five offer a flatbed scanner, only the Canon Pixma MP780 All-In-One features an automatic document feeder (ADF), which lets you scan multiple pages at once. The MP780 is also the only one to offer a standalone fax, although the P4350 also offers faxing capabilities via a PC fax modem.