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I believe the issue that annoys most do-it-at-homers is faithful colour reproduction. Often the prints never match what is seen on the display.
Might you do a piece on online printer profilers? These companies will create a profile specific to your printer and costs less (apparently) than purchasing a hardware printer calibrator.

Thanks for the suggestion. We'll look into that for a future article.

FrankCDN, on 12 November 2009 - 02:06 PM, said:

The profiles provided with the printer are usually good enough for the casual user. While profiling the printer will give you a more accurate printer profile, it will do nothing to address the real problem of how the color looks on your monitor versus the print. To achieve accurate results you will also need a good monitor that can display as much of the color gamut of the printer as possible and an accurate profile for that monitor.

all inkjet are designed for landfill, just take look around everyone's home there always one or more broken inkjet printer in there.

anyone need instant photo should start with a dyesub printer, the paper cost is cheaper and last longer

I was printing out a bunch of copies of a photo, and accidentally printed onto the cardboard package insert. The result was incredible! It looks like a painting. We now have it framed, and on display.

Maybe next time, I'll try black velvet?

The term "a little sharpening" has foiled the results of more than one photographer new to digital print making. What precisely constitutes a "lilttle sharpening." For more than a year I guessed that I shouldn't sharpen more than a +20 in iPhoto. A few months ago, however, I discovered - to my delight - that many of my images would benefit from as much as a +70 of sharpening with absolutely no loss in image quality, or increase in apparent in what used to be called "grain" in film photography. My advice is when it comes to sharpeing digital images experiment before setting limits.

DeltaE, on 12 November 2009 - 04:01 PM, said:

Before rushing out and buying a color calibration system I decided to try the color calibration system built into OSX. To my delight the process was both very straightforward and very accurate and my prints now come so close to matching the image on my monitor that all I have to do is remember that my images print a bit lighter than they appear on the screen. Sometimes when I recalibrate things shift a bit one way or the other but within a few prints I am able to see how to compensate for the current calibration and all goes well.