I need help to pick a new printer!

[Unseen]

My old printers breaking down. I got one laser and inkjet printers which are 6 years old and spoiled. So I am looking for new INKJET printer for around $100. I hoping for these features on it:

It has cheap generic ink cartages for like $3 that actaully work well enough.
It needs to have laser printer like text quality or near it
Atleast 6 ppm black text and 4 ppm for color text, but higher the better.
Also maybe around 2-3 mins to print a WHOLE PAGE of color photo
Atleast 1440 by 720 DPI, I am thinking should be more.

Anyhow hope I can get some good suggestion!

 

[M39shadow]

Print cartridges for about $3, don't think your gonna find that. Even if you DID find cartridges that cheap they'd be empty by the time you hit your 5th page. As I've said before in this forum, your better off looking at price per page than how much a print cartridge costs. Some cartridges have more ink in them than others. What you will find is that per page costs between inkjets are fairly close though there are a few with much higher costs than others. The more costly ones are usually the least expensive ones BTW. That said, cost per page is a subjective thing because it depends on what is being printed. Photos take more ink than text and etc.

I think you will find that almost any currently available inkjet printer is capable of laser quality text. Basically that occurs once you get to 600 x 600 resolution and beyond. Likewise most printers these days are faster than you mention.

Tom's has some pretty good articles on printers here. You can also check out other Web periodicals. Personnally I don't think it matters that much which one you pick as long as you find one that fits all of your needs. Pick a manufacturer that your comfortable with and check out what they offer. Compare those to others from other manufacturers. Then decide what best fits your needs.

If you really can't decide, run down to your local retailer and check out whats there. Print some test or Demo pages and compare the results (make sure they are using hte same paper cause some printers don't print real well on plain paper.

 

[sholling]

Good quality sub $3 cartridges are available on ebay for a few of the Canons. I've had only one flaky one out of a dozen or so and no harm done to my S520 (which exceeds your requirements). Find a seller you like and stick with him.

Personally I'd look for an i560 (~$100 street) or an i860 (~$150) - both of which exceed your requirements.