Thanks for all the input, I looked at some printers and decided I like the HP approach the best and was planning on picking up an HP 1102W until I discovered it doesn't have Ethernet, just Wi-Fi. (this honestly never occurred to me until I was looking at the floor model at Best Buy.) Their house is huge so I wasn't going to take for granted that the end-result here was going to be tremendously less frustrating.
However as luck would have it I was able to buy a new HP LaserJet M604 for spectacularly little and just plugged it in place of their old Lexmark monstrosity. My parents could live another thirty years and I don't think they will print 10,500 pages.