According to MacWorlds on "Get the Best Price" One can get a Re-spiffy'ed R1900 for $379.

Holy Zarquon's singing fish. If Santa comes through on the Nikon D60 this Christmas I might just find good use for $379 of it.

I am enjoying my Lexmark X4580. Wireless Wi-Fi access to it from all around the house. Reasonable ink cartridge pricing. Speed is fine. Quality of B/W text pages is excellent. Quality of color pages is very good. Less than US$100 - INCLUDING Wi-Fi capability.

Seems to me that one real benefit to an inkjet printer is a wider choice of printing media - something that's not mentioned in the article.

For example, my wife routinely prints on cotton and silk sheets that are designed for use in inkjet printers, and has used several techniques over the years to print on her own fabric.

Yep. Jacquard makes a couple of different types of ready-made fabric sheets. Load it just like any other paper, print, remove the paper backing, iron, and it's permanent. Very useful for textile artists. My wife has also made her own printable fabric. HP has an article describing how and there are other sources using similar methods.

Epson's DURAbrite inks seem to work best for printing on fabric for my wife, but your mileage may vary. She's heard that Epson's pigment inks - like the ones used in the R1900 - also do well. My wife uses an Epson C88, a relatively cheap 4-ink printer.

I'm sort of surprised that the article didn't mention uses other than printing traditional photos. We don't bother to print photos with the Epson C88. It's just cheaper to use any online service and we get better results. The only thing the inkjet gets used for is art projects.

I used to work with two guys who had young children. Their children liked to print and since that can run into plenty of dough for ink, they discovered Canon printers.
The cartridges are dirt cheap and can be refilled with bottled ink very easily and cleanly for next to nothing. The printers they bought were Walmart cheapies, but I bought the PIXMA MP600.
I have owned probably 4 printers before, being lulled into the HP, Epson and Lexmark printers by their cheap price. Like everybody, I discovered the replacement cartridges were as much or more than the printers cost.
I have refilled the Canon cartridges many times and generally use a pair of latex gloves and have found them extremely easy to refill thanks to their clear inkwells.
To get the gloves on pour some water into them and then they slide on. Then turn your hand upside down to let the excess water drain out. Wipe with a towel and then refill. To take them off run some water into them again so they swell up and then they slide off easily.
If I am printing stuff that is for my personal use, I use paper that was printed on the other side. So I don't have to be Ebenezer S. with the printer like I was with the other brands of printers. I have printed a number of photos on Epson Glossy Photo paper and they came out superb.
The Pixma cost more, I think 200 to 300 USD (I forget exactly) and there was a rebate. (What a pain that was) However I got a wonderful scanner and photocopier to boot. I have it hooked up Bluetooth and My girlfriend and I Love it. It just keeps on tickin. Three colours and two black cartridges. One black has something to do with photos I believe.
I had a warranty issue that may have been related to a power surge, but Canon was excellent. No probs since. Probably new in Feb 2007. It's plugged through a line conditioner now.

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1mac 24",Leopard, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.16 Ghz, 2GB ram, Griffen 250Gb ext HD,SuperDuper, iPod 8 Gb MagicJack, Canon PIXMA MP600 (Bluetooth)

I'll join this chorus of what the hell's? and Where's Canon? Since the web is of infinite size, I guess the reason for this substitute for a "buyer's guide" can't be that it's a space filler. But I will add this:

Epson was first to the photo quality party both for photo pros and then enthusiasts. They made very nice -- if fragile and non-archival prints, offered wide carriages and would even print panaromic up to, I think, 44" wide. I owned serveral.

I also replaced several relatively soon and spent a freaking fortune on ink.

Now this was 6-8 years ago, so things may have changed -- reference Apple's standing in the computer world at the time -- but once I decided my niche was more enthusiast than big time, I switched to Canon and immediately began saving money on ink, repairs and replacements with excellent quality. My Pixma 5200R is still a workhorse, handlling draft printing of web receipts, critical text printing, matte and gloosy photos, in color and B/W, etc. with equal aplomb and freeing my notebook from yet another USB tether with its wireless capability.

And even this old news raises more points than the article!

Next time you dip this shallowly in the pool, I suggest you call it a "quick printer take for clueness noobs" rather than a "guilde."

Our intention with this series of guides was to give people a quick overview of what to consider when buying certain types of printers along with summaries to reviews of our top-rated printers from the past year or so. We were hopeful that this would give people pressed a way to make an informed buying decision along with ways to drill down deeper into more printer coverage if they so desired.

I'm sorry that you found this approach wanting and that it didn't live up to your expectations...


... and I'm even sorrier that I live in a world where people feel they can be rude, abusive, and insulting without any consequence. If you're dissatisfied with an article we've done, by all means let us know -- it only helps us improve in the future. But there's no reason to be an impolite jerk about it.

Unless that's the only way you're capable of acting, I guess.