I approach these kinds of problems a little differently - rather than decide what I have to have and then go get it, I see what I can get cheaply (or free-ly) and make that work.

As I reported in an earlier thread, I have an HP 5Si that I picked up at a garage sale for $30 six or eight years ago. Tricked it up with memory, PostScript, duplexer, and MIO, and it sits (somewhat heavily) on the table next to the router. Available to all my computers, wired and wireless. Still using the same cartridge I bought back then and it still churns out paper at a very acceptable rate (24 ppm). My total investment was well under two hundred bucks.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a deal on craigslist - a local outfit was dumping their Xerox Phasers (two of them) for a ridiculously low price. I got both of them and a ton of ink for $200. Downloaded the drivers and manuals from Xerox, attached the cat5 cable, and it was up and running before it warmed up.

I had never used a solid ink printer before; I wasn't real happy with the output from color lasers (nor the cost of replacing the toners) but this thing is a marvel. Fast and quiet, and the built in duplexing is a bonus.

I bought some white card stock and use it to print photos. They won't pass a very critical eye, but the results are really astonishing. It does the same on ordinary bond paper, but the card stock is sturdier and makes it look like a regular 8x10 print.

I've run a few hundred pages through it so far, and the maintenance kit still registers as 88% life left. Besides, if anything breaks I've got a spare just sitting around.