So true. We do most of our printing on an ancient LaserJet 5, which even does duplex. Okay, the thing is so heavy I can barely lift it without taking it apart,

So true. We do most of our printing on an ancient LaserJet 5, which even does duplex. Okay, the thing is so heavy I can barely lift it without taking it apart, occasionally it gets a paper jam somewhere deep inside (it's been nicknamed 'Satan') and parallel ports are getting harder to find. But it still works. For your average text and light graphics printing, laser printers are awesome. That said, there are certainly decent, affordable inkjet printers out there that do what they do well, namely printing photos and graphics. Most people just go for whatever printer is cheapest, but if you do just a little bit of research, you'll find models that have separate cartridges for each ink colour and permanent printing heads. This means that (a) you only replace ink that's actually used up, (b) the print head is built to last, (c) the cartridges are simple and therefore cheap. Our HP PhotoSmart 8250 is great, never jams up and a pack of 6 cartridges with a stack of photo paper costs less than €30. My parents' cheapo inkjets keep playing up and replacing the cartridges costs twice as much because the print head is on the cartridge. Plus, the print quality isn't as good. After about 3 refills, the price works out about the same. So basically, it's just the old fallacy that cheapest = best value.