I'll throw out my 2c.
2 years ago I gave up on printing photos at home. The aggravation, wasted ink, wasted paper, time and everything else included on it just wasn't worth it anymore. And it wasn't for lack of trying. Over the past ~10 years I've spent probably $1000 on photo quality inkjets and accessories, including outboard ink systems. Before the outboard ink system, the cartridge would dry up between the time that I would need to print something (I had a 12 year old HP B+W laser to do documents, that is still kicking mind you), then I moved to the outboard system and again it would never fail, something was clogged or the print head needed replaced or it leaked all over the place. BLAH.
If I need prints quickly done, I jump in the car and drive to the CVS that's 5 minutes away. I'm in and out and back home faster than if I was printing them at home, at least if I'm printing more than 10 or 15 prints. If i need better quality, I put an order in with Mpix.
2 years ago is when I bought my Samsung color laser and haven't looked back since. I picked it up for $200 and it's an absolute tank. Plug it into the network, load the drivers on all of the PC's in the house and its done. I've had a paper jam maybe a half dozen times, other than that, never a problem. It prints pictures IN documents on plain paper well, I'm never ashamed to turn in a proposal to a client with color pics in it, but it's definitely not a photo printer, IE it won't print 4x6, 5x7, etc. In 2 years I've replaced the black toner once, it sits about 90% full right now. The color toners are still all around 75%. It's significantly cheaper to print on a laser than an inkjet, plus it's crisper and doesn't run if it gets wet.
To put it into a cost perspective, an Artisian 710 runs ~$200 after tax. After tax, I pay $0.20 per print at my CVS. When they're on sale, they run $0.15 and I once in a blue moon (mmm.. beer..) I've seen them at $0.08. Anyhow, even at .20 per print, just the cost of the printer alone (not including consumables, ink, paper, etc. We'll call the time of printing a wash) means you could get 1000 lab quality prints. Their lab is open 24/7 and is *significantly* faster on doing larger orders, than printing at home. And if I really want to, I can upload the pics from home, within a minute, they have them on their machine at the store, so I can run up whenever it's convenient to grab them.
The color refill kit for the Epson is $62, black is another $20. That's $80 in ink! Or another 400 prints if done by a lab. One review I read on the Artisan is he went through an entire set of cartridges on less than a ream of paper. Obviously photos consume lots more ink, unfortunately I can't find an actual cost-per-average-4x6-print to make a apples to apples comparison. The manufactures don't seem to like to publish this information and I can't blame them! If you were to get 100 prints out of a set of cartridges (I feel I'm being pretty liberal here, I never got close to that out of the inkjets I had), it's going to cost $82 for ink + $17 for a 100 pack of Epson premium 4x6 paper = $99 / 100 prints = $0.99 per print. 5 times as expensive as having a photo lab do it.
The only home printer I've ever seen that was awesome all of the time was one that my parents bought my grandparents for Christmas numerous years ago. It was a Kodak Easyshare printer, bundled with an Easyshare camera. This was perfect for them, they snap pics, sit it on the printer, select what they want and boom, it prints. They never had to hookup to a PC, never even had to take the memory card out or even the batteries as it charged on the printer dock.
What made that printer so special was that it was a dye sublimation printer. The photo kits came with a cartridge and 50 sheets of (special) paper. For $38 bucks you knew exactly how many prints you were getting. It was a 5 pass system, the first 4 passes laying down the cyan, yellow, magenta and black, then a 5th pass that applied a clear UV protective coating. It produced great looking pics and worked every time. Unfortunately, they no longer make them and my Grandpa says finding the refill kits is getting difficult. They too were expensive at $0.76 per print.
My 2c.
I realize that some people NEED to print photos at home, but at this point with a pharmacy seemingly on every corner now (within a 3 mile radius of my home, I have 7 pharmacies that all do lab work, plus the Ritz, Target,
Walmart, Sams, etc), you may want to consider rethinking printing at home.
that will print pictures that are not off colored or blurry
)
