I purchased an Epson R200 recently (£69 from PC world), good quality prints advantage of the 6 cartridges are that you can replace them one at a time (office world were doing a deal 3 for the price of 2), but as you say it is expensive to replace all at once. The other thing is it can recognise non Epson cartridges but dont see any reduction in print quality.
It also has a paper sensor so it manages to work out what type of paper you are using eg plain or photo paper etc, also prints on 200gm card if required. Good output on acetate sheet as well.
Have tried the CD printing and the results are reasonably good.
Happy with the printer and the quality of the output bith text and photos.