Your choice of printers....

[az]

But who NEEDS color anyway? Printing photos is DAMN expensive, you need special paper yada yada yada, just send them to a good online lab and let them mail REAL photos to you. Letters are almost always text-only, and black on white - with the exception of fancy letterheads (is this the right word?), which I would, if I needed such a thing, buy pre-printed.

Sure, a little color here and there is nice, but for everyday correspondence, you don't really need it.

That said, I own a color inkjet But only because I write a letter maybe once a month.

AZ

[Indiana]

Yes, you can clearly hear from your post that you never owned a decent photo inkjet printer

All that avoided hassle with having to go to a photolab (or sendig your pictures to an online service like the crappy Pixelnet in germany) is IMO worth the maybe slightly higher cost. Just take the photograph and have it in your hands in two minutes...
You can give the photos you took to your friends on the same evening, even in a fancy great looking borderless A4 format if you like.

Do me a favor: go to a shop, let them print a digicam photo you brought with you on a Epson Photo950 using photo paper and then argue again

And for b/w prints: the Canon S750 and i850 printers are damn fast for normal text, faster in fact than all the HP 4-10 ppm laser printers we have at work. And clearly not more expensive if you look at ink prices vs. toner cartridges. The Canon do have fine quality on plain paper as well.

[rugger]

The big problem I have with laser printers is that even though they are cheap per page, when you actually have to buy something for a laser printer ... it is hideously expensive

I prefer paying in smaller amounts even though I may end up paying more in the long run. (though, I am still many hunderds of dollars ahead of a good laser printer)

[az]

Indiana: Use pixum.de for your photos, then

Photo printing on thick photo paper is much more expensive than through an online lab. The quality might be alright though, I don't know

AZ

[Topha]

Got an Canon S750. I love it, because it is fast, quiet, nice quality and it doesnt use much ink. You can print without the white border, and the new ink is cheap.

I definitly like it better than my dads HP cxi990

[Sethos]

Well espon = crap more or less, I've only heard one person endorse it. HP is good but hella expensive not only in the printer itself, but also the print cartrage weather it be ink or laser, Lexmark is a bit better and has recently-ish released the new dell printers (yes a team up between Dell and lexmark)... having said all of the above, my fingers are very tired, but having also said that...I go with a HP. Aside form the cost they are good quality printers, and almost never fail and really I only end up having to replace my toner cartridge about two or three times a year, and at 80 USD a pop that seems more or less reasonalble to me right now(especially since I'm not footing the bill )

~Sethos

[Ssin]

HP = top of mind. That's why they charge premium price for theyr cartridges. Epson = crap. That's one of the few companies that does not let you change your printerhead and it's not covered by warranty (with HP range, you change it everytime you change cartridge and with Canon you change it every +/-10 cartridges). Canon is the best all around, fast, reliable and cheap. Hell cheap. HP used to be reliable but with product broken 2 times out of 10 I find it an unacceptable toll. HP's services is nowhere either (well at least where I live). Do yourselve a favor, ask the shop about the cartridges whenever you buy a printer and compare the prices of the cartridges because THAT's what's going to cost you. As Indiana said, Canon has a good quality on plain regular paper, plus their S400 (and higher) series comes standard with four ink receptacles. And Canon does not ship their printers with half filled cartridges, ALL other big brands do.

AND YES I'm PRO Canon

[az]

Lexmark

AZ

[Ssin]

Lexmark sells printers cheaper than their cartridges. How can you trust a company that :
-1- doesn't let the "uneducated" people know that in long term this product is not viable.
-2- encourage pollution. For the price of the cartridge, people buy new printers and throw the old one away even if its one month old.

...and did I say that Epson was crap. Seeing an Epson logo somewhere makes me laugh my arss off. Don't trust a company that doesn't know what the words "customers" "services" and "quality" are.. let alone in the same sentence.

Agfa used to have great scanners... if only the SCSI versions. Somehow I heard that LaCie was getting their old SCSI scanners and selling them.
Canon also has good scanner. Not so expensive and defenitly full of features.

Yeah right, I like Canon products!

[az]

In case you hadn't noticed, that was a joke

But yes, Lexmark is evil. But they make some good laser printers, I hear.

AZ

[Ssin]

Hey I'm still a mini-murcer, I'm still learning the ways of the big guys .

Yeah Lexmark is evil. Maybe they make decent laser printers. The only big printer that really made me move was Tektronix Phaser 840n. This baby was a dream to use. Plus it was solid ink so you never got bored with maintenance and powder getting spilled everywhere.
Did you know BTW that HP doesn't manufacture their own laser printers? Guess who does ....

.... yes.. the one I like

[az]

This: is the irony/sarcasm smiley, especially when used multiple times

AZ

[Ssin]

ok so I can't use smiley's but who cares? :P