Most people spend a great deal of time buying computers, researching and comparing. After all that time spent picking a computer that same buyer will pick-up a printer as an afterthought. Before you run out and "pick-up" a printer consider these questions:

	First and foremost, how much will the printer cost to run in the way of consumables such as ink and paper? A $49.00 color inkjet printer sounds like a real "bargain" when you first buy it. That lasts about as long as the first cartridges of ink last. Then you are in the hospital for heart failure after the trip to the office supply store costs about $60.00 for two, count them...2, inkjet cartridges. That's about $11.00 more than you paid for the printer and it came with two cartridges. Many low end printers, in addition to having a very short use life (usually about 1 year), have very expensive cartridge costs. For about $50.00 - $80.00 more you could be a better quality printer that costs far less to run and offers more features.  *For example, The HP Deskjet 3320 costs about $49.99 street price and includes one color cartridge (#27). It can use an optional black cartridge, sold separately. The Canon i550 sells for about $129.99 street price and includes a 4-color printhead and 4 cartridges, you normally need only buy additional cartridges as needed. The upfront price of the Canon printer is about $80.00 more. So the HP printer looks like a bargain, right? Look at the cost to run each printer for 1 year using just OEM cartridges printing an average of about 45  8.5"x11" photos and about 100 pages of text a month. We used the best prices we could find for these products on the manufacturers' websites and purchased sufficient quantity to meet the page requirements: Description HP 3320 Canon I550 Printer Cost $49.99 $129.99 Duty Cycle 350 pages per month 700 pages per month #27 Black Cartridge 10mL $15.99 x 31 N/A #28 Color Cartridge 2.5 mL $34.99 x 62 N/A BCI-3e Black cartridge 26 mL N/A $13.99 x 12 BCI-3e Cyan Cartridge 13 mL N/A $11.99 x 12 BCI-3e Yellow Cartridge 13 mL N/A $11.99 x 12 BCI-3e Cyan Cartridge 13 mL N/A $11.99 x 12 Total 1 Year Cost for Printer and Ink $1909.06 $729.51 Amortized Cost Per Page: $1.09 $.42 Looks unbelievable, doesn't it. That $49.99 printer will cost you 2.5 times as much per page to use to produce the same quantity of printers as the more expensive $129.99 printer. By the way, those costs per page don't include the cost of the paper you use. So that $129.99 investment could save you $1179.55 over the year in printing costs, enough to buy an additional 9 Canon i550 printers, with cartridges. Why the big difference in costs? The HP printer utilizes economy volume cartridges, which have a lower per cartridge page yield than the Canon printer. You have to buy more cartridges from HP than Canon. Even though the Canon cartridges are more expensive, you get more prints from them than you would from the HP cartridges. Canon uses up front pricing, more expensive upfront costs, but better long term savings. If you are on a tight budget and print frugally the HP printer is a better up front deal, but if you print with any degree of regularity you will end up paying a lot more for the "bargain" printer.
	Another question many fail to ask themselves is, What am I going to be printing with this printer? Are you using it mostly for printing letters, web pages, and simple desktop uses like greeting cards or invoices? Then you want a 4-color printer, maybe with some good photo-capability, that uses large text black ink cartridges. Maybe you want to have a printer dedicated to printing photos only? Then get a 6-color printer with a small drop size, good print speed, and excellent optimized resolution.
	What size paper format do I need most? The paper size you need can limit your choices. Most inkjet printers can easily handle 8.5" wide paper up to as long as 44 inches. When you move up to 11" or 13" wide papers the choices become more limited and much more expensive. Above 13" the prices increase exponentially. The most expensive Inkjet printer I have found was capable of 84" wide prints and could use 500 foot long rolls of paper, all for the low, low price of a mere $149,000.00, it didn't do anything that a smaller version (only $84,000.00) could not also do, except the width of paper it could handle. Remember, buy the printer based on your ability to pay for the costs of running it. If a $250.00 printer will do 90% of what you need, don't just buy the $50.00 just for the extra 10%, instead look at outsourcing the larger prints you need 10% of the time.

Now if money is not any issue, buy whatever you want since you can obviously afford it. For the other 98% of us, think carefully about what you are buying. Look at a realistic cost of operation, don't depend on the cost specs the manufacturer provides, they fudge those figures like they do the longevity ratings. Ask around about other issues related to your printer such as, OS software compatibility, platform compatibility, application compatibility, paper compatibility, 3rd party consumable compatibility and potential service issues. There a plenty of newsgroups and discussion forums on the web where such discussions are ongoing.