At These Prices, a Multiprinter Household Makes $ense

There was a time when you would contemplate a printer purchase carefully, trying to find the best all-round printer for the job. And of course you wanted it to last for years. All for good reason—printers were both clunky and expensive.

Today, printers aren't quite disposable, but they're getting closer. You can get a really nice printer for $150 to $200, the cost of dinner or a night at the theatre in my part of the world. If you do a lot of printing with a variety of media, you may want to think about keeping multiple printers in your home. The only thing you give up is some space on your desktop.

We're the kind of family that does a lot of printing: term papers, photo projects, plans, and proposals. My husband even prints customer manuals for the products he develops, so we keep quite a few printers on our home network.

At the moment here's what the stable looks like:

Available for under $300, the Epson Stylus RX700 screams "flexibility." It copies, scans, and makes beautiful photo prints. It'll take input from every memory card imaginable as well as USB 2.0. My favorite feature? It's got a little plastic holder which lets you print directly on a CD or DVD. (See my next post for how this worked for Father's Day gifts.) A holder also manages negatives or slides for the scanner. Software included for all of the printer's functions are easy to use and robust. As the ultimate test, the prints are quite stunning.

That said, we keep our older workhorse, the HP 970 around. It's still a solid inkjet printer, and for us, it does one thing REALLY well and that's double-sided printing. You can pick these up for around $50 these days.

Last year we bought an HP Photosmart 7750, which would cost you less than $100 today. We paid less than $200 a year ago. It's still great for printing photos. And one of the reasons we keep it is the two printer trays that accommodate different sized prints (plus the fact that we have a ton of HP consumables).

If you do volume text printing in monochrome (like my husband's manuals) you won't go wrong with an inexpensive laser printer. One of the best buys out there at this moment is the HP LaserJet 1320 for under $300.

Missing from our arsenal is a portable photo printer. I love making a quick print for a visiting friend or relative and I love sending a photo to someone on the spur of the moment. So, Honey, if you're reading this, add it to the holiday wish list. The Kodak EasyShare 500 has Bluetooth, accommodates a variety of media, and lets you do simple editing without the computer. Now available for about $150, I want to take it to the holiday parties with us.

At these prices I begin to think about printers like shoes. I'm not wearing high heels to the gym, and I'm not printing my beautiful photos on my workaday printer.