i need a printer question

I really want a second monitor but i have no functioning printer, though i still have a $100 coupon from dell,,was looking at this printer http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=V505sap&s=dhs

what do you think?

thanks in advance

It's not the printer, it's the ink. Canon printers are the best that I know of in terms of ink value.

Laser for B/W
Photo for color
Fax machine if you really need one. My modem and scanner have always worked for me.

My story of printers:
Since 2003, I had a Canon i550. What I liked best, were the transparent ink cartridges. I drilled a hole in the black one, and refilled it dozens of times. During all the years I spent about €20 on ink.
It crapped out beyond repair recently, but after 6 years of perfect service, I'm not bummed.

The problems with ink jets nowadays is, that they either have cartridges which cannot be refilled easily, or ones with chips in them to prevent people from doing so, or both. Anyways, one is stuck with buying new ones frequently. What makes things worse, that a lot of ink is wasted in the cleaning process. Also when printing just b/w, the coler ink is empty every couple of weeks.

So I would only buy a laser these days.
Now there are consumer grade, and industry/office grade lasers. The consumer grade ones, which are fairly small, dont have very sturdy guts. After some time, the paper transport system will crap out.
Therefore, I bought a HP laserjet 2300. I got a refurbished one with new tomer from eBay for €70. As it only has 10,000 pages printed before, it is practically new, considering that there are printers of the same type on eBay with a quater million pages on them.
Well, this thing is big, ugly, and it rocks. It prints super sharp, and lightning fast. Have it on standby, hit the print button, and when you have counted to 10, the first page is printed already, and the following pages need 2sec each.
New refurbished toner cartridges are pretty cheap; I calculated costs of 0.4ct per page. An ink jet normally costs 10 times that.

I would always buy this printer again. Here are some ebay links:

http://cgi.ebay.de/HP-Laserjet-Lase...iewItemQQptZCOMP_Printers?hash=item439b0d1776

http://cgi.ebay.de/Hewlett-Packard-...iewItemQQptZCOMP_Printers?hash=item19b7699b6e

http://cgi.ebay.de/HP-Laserjet-2300...iewItemQQptZCOMP_Printers?hash=item27ac8f0950

NewEgg has a Samsung color laser for 130 bucks. Not bad, but I am sure a set of cartridges will set you back as much as the printer cost. You won't get the same photo quality out of a laser you get out of any inkjet but you will get decent quality and you will get many more prints think order of magnitude in general per cartridge. Laser will also limit the kind of media you can print on.
If you print a lot I would get a cheap monochrome laser printer. And if you want occasional color I would get the cheapest inkjet I could find and buy refilled cartridges or just buy another 25 buck printer when those run out, sad... but true.

I've worked for service companies and after servicing many customers I prefer HP, I've seen too many issues with the other brands and so many HP's that just won't die. I bought myself a deskjet 600 in 1995 and gave it away in 2000 for a P1218 photo printer, then last year gave that away for an 8180 all in one. Both the ones I gave away are still is use.

Canon.

I have the iP4300 and it has been excellent excellent excellent. We have had it for maybe four years now and it's still going strong. Ink isn't cheap, but the images are very impressive. I think they are up to the iP4500 now, but it's just a refinement of the one I have.

Of course, as has been mentioned, if you need mostly text, and lots of pages, don't get an ink jet.

I've still got an OLD Okidata 6e printer. It's like a laser printer but instead of a laser it had an LED array that wrote to the drum. Bought it back in '98 for $239 on some disco blowout sale stuffed with extra memory. Okidata made tough printers.

I would be seriously tempted to buy a scanner / printer combo.

I have various printers - mostly HP, and they are fine. Frankly, my old 960 is such a workhorse, and cheap on ink, that I use it a lot. The rest of the family uses a newer wireless HP 7200 unit - it is ok -but much slower and more expensive to run.

I do a little photo scanning, and after a lot of research, picked up a canoscan 8800F - my first canon anything. I regret not spending another $100 - 200 and getting the full scan + printer as I am quite impressed with the results and it would have been 1 less box on the desk.

One thing I would avoid is imagining that you can do serious scanning and large file printing via wifi - it is just too slow - at least that has been our experience so far.

Also - double check to make sure it will work with the OS or multiple OS you plan to have. We have a mix of xp, vista, and 2 versions of mac - not that many printers and scanners support them all - and few do it really well. HP is surprisingly good at it for printing. No one seems that good at it for scanning.

I almost got my son in college a printer, scanner combo recently. It was an HP for $40. But, apparently wireless printing is becoming the norm. Cheapest one of those (Lexmark) at the same place (Target) was $80. I does sound like a good idea. Guess I'll wait for a sale.

Geoff