Another valuable opportunity for
airship to castigate HP printers...
NEVER, EVER AGAIN BUY A HP "all in 1" printer. Spent EUR 500 on a HP "SOHO" back in 2003 bought through DELL. Literally just 2 years later (and just out of the extended 24 month guarantee...), it suffered a "carriage-return" failure and became a very heavy "paper-weight". At "the office" we've had a few HP "all in 1"s too. Whilst never suffering from the "carriage-return" failure of my own, they never lasted in an office environment and required replacement within 2 years or less, with lots of stuff "breaking-off" etc. (we used duct-tape on 1 to keep the access door to the ink-jet cartridges closed).
Replaced my own with a CANON MP780 "all in 1" (with go
od fax facility, though hardly use the fax anymore in 2014) in 2005. Replaced the CANON print-head (not difficult) for EUR 65.00 in 2011. It's a "work-horse", always reliable and still going strong today.
Can't really comment on printing efficiency or performance, but on cost of cartridges etc. my MP780 appears to have been quite economical and certainly CANON do not appear to "gouge" their customer (ie. sell the printer cheap, and make up for that in exorbitant prices on replacement cartridges) compared to certain mfrs. including HP.
In 2014, it would make absolute sense to have 2 separate printers. 1 dedicated to photo-quality printing. Another, dedicated to everything else. We have a couple of tiny
SAMSUNG SCX-3205W B&W (also scan in colour) laser printers in "the office". It never ceases to amaze me at how fast they are at making an old-fashioned photocopy: scan and printout in 3-4 seconds "start to finish"...?!
DON'T BUY HP! BUY CANON (or SAMSUNG) instead!