Most people really don't need color pictures and would be best served by putting an ax through the one they currently own, then driving a stake through it to remind themselves that $8000 a gallon is way too much to pay for ink.
Go out and purchase a good low-end monochrome laser printer.
Use the local picture printing kiosk for any color pictures you need. It's cheaper than filling the spent ink tray every time the printer starts up and clears its heads.
Basically, if you're stubbornly going to keep going the inkjet route and not use it to print at least ten pages a week, buy one that has the print head built into the cartridge and buy a new set of cartridges every time you intend on printing. Do not buy a printer with separate print heads if you do not intend on using it! The print heads sediment up, and since most people are not buying industrial strength ink printers with replaceable print heads, the only way of fixing it is to throw the printer away, extremely wasteful of money and resources when you find out your multifunction scanner/fax/printer is useless because of this.
And don't even begin to consider a color laser printer. The damn things are even worse about wasting toner on doing recalibrates and will send you to the poor house buying toner cartridges for just spinning over doing registry checks.
@TheLQ: Part of owning something is remembering to perform periodic maintenance on it. The same goes for a computer, a car, and even a house. . . . . I often forget things, too, however, so I see myself in your comment. Perhaps you could set up some automatic reminder system to help you remember. – jvriesem – 2015-06-05T19:19:48.327
The article link doesn't work any more. Got an update? – Barmar – 2016-05-17T18:11:49.930
@Barmar Fixed.. – Moab – 2016-05-17T18:30:23.163
5Well a test page requires me remembering to do it (not going to happen) and can also burn through ink with enough time. And a laser printer is way overkill for what I'm doing. Plus its horribly expensive to get a color laser printer. Sure I won't have to replace it for the next 5 years, but its hard to pay several hundred dollars up front for a good laser printer with good photo quality. And the cartridges themselves are really expensive too. – TheLQ – 2010-10-10T23:56:52.290
TheLQ Aren't the cartridges much cheaper? – Pacerier – 2012-05-17T23:00:41.420
2In order to keep nozzles clear, you have to burn through ink, that's the whole point of the recharge cycle the printer performs. It clears semi-dry ink out of the nozzles. At $8000 a gallon, the manufacturer knows you will be using it one way or the other, either you use it usefully and put it on paper (even though its a test page) or you put it in the waste ink discharge tray. You have no choice. It's why the printers are so cheap now. Like gaming consoles, they don't make the money by selling the equipment, but the supplies. – Fiasco Labs – 2012-12-24T16:02:31.390
Color laser printers have a recalibration cycle for registration checks. They're just as efficient at wasting toner as ink jets are at getting you to buy ink. Color printing is highly overrated and has very low ROI. – Fiasco Labs – 2012-12-24T16:04:40.437
2I've found HP to be much less ink-wasting than Epson, if that's any use. – user541686 – 2012-12-24T16:27:08.523