Well, I had a nice thorough primer on printers written up for you, but this is one of those occassions where I really want to smack the idiot that mapped the backspace key to the 'Back' feature of the browser -- all you have to do is momenarily let the cursor lose focus of the textbox and the backspace button goes from deleting an unwanted character to wiping out the entire response! grrrrrr!!! :BangHead:
Anyhow, you really need to define what your expectations and needs are before anyone can recommend a proper printer for your needs. Every printer in existence is a trade-off of features and functionality.
For my purposes I maintain an 6-ink Epson inkjet printer for the exclusive purpose of photographic printing because that is what they do better than *any* other brand of printer out there. I also maintain a Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser printer for all my other printing because, assuming I purchase high-yield toner cartridges from online retailers -- it is only modestly more expensive/page than a comparable business-class color inkjet while being orders of magnitude faster than color inkjets (up to 24pgs/minute full color/single-sided or 8pgs/min double-sided... something no inkjet can *practically* achieve). My Brother color laser is a true full-featured multifunction center with Printing, Copying, Scanning (incl. over network to a PC and to FTP or email), and Fax with very few compromises. It also sports a 50-page Duplexed ADF (auto-document feeder) which is wonderful for bulk scanning of loose two-sided documents (or bills). It also has well-written drivers that integrate well with Windows PCs and its builtin support of PostScript allows it to integrate wonderfully with CUPS in Linux.
In the past I preferred HP Inkjets for business-class printing due to their wonderfully crisp black text printing (thanks to the use of a pigmented black ink). HP inkjets still have the best quality black text print quality of any inkjet, but their drivers, firmware, and support applications have become terribly bug-ridden due to a Microsoft-like laser-focus on added features and new-model releases rather than cleaning up their existing code base. This is even more true of their multifunction printers. A terrible shame because I really like their print-engines and inks for general business-quality documents.
Other than HP Inkjets, I really don't like the black text output (on ordinary non-specialty papers) of most other inkjet brands because their black inks are optimized for color photo printing rather than that of text printing. As a result, their black text, on ordinary paper, is typically rendered as a dark-gray and sometimes even fuzzy black text -- however their quality on specialty papers can be wonderful (but you pay a premium for the use of specialty paper).
When you do go shopping for your new printer, do not be swayed by the retail price of the printer unless you are an extremely light user. When it comes to printers (laser or inkjet) you can either pay up front or pay on the backend. Unless you are an extremely light user it pays off to pay up front (as in, purchase a more costly printer) because you will get a better built printer that utilizes much larger ink cartridges/tanks. Since you pay roughly the same for a small ink cartridge as you do for a large one, you save money by paying upfront for a printer that uses larger ink cartridges. That usually means you will be investing in a true business-class inkjet (or laser) which means you get a better built printer that is much less likely to self-destruct after a paper jam (the better printers usually have extra sensors that detect the jam and stop the printer when a jam occurs, rather than ignoring the jam and plowing on through like many cheaper models do). By purchasing better quality printers I frequently get 10+ years (and many tens-of-thousands of pages) out of my printers -- which really makes the greater up-front cost more palatable. It is extremely rare that I replace such a printer before the 50,000+ page mark.
If you have a multi-PC household and regularly share one or two nice printers, it pays to invest in a printer with built-in network support (either Wired or WiFi). Wired ethernet is the best overall choice where a wired network connection is an option, otherwise you can opt for WiFi.
It is also worth considering investing in a printer with a builtin paper duplexer which allows for automatic double-sided printing. The duplexer will slow down the printer (typically about 1/3 the speed of single-sided printing) but you gain the ability to print to both sides of each sheet which nearly cuts your paper consumption in half and, if you regularly save or archive your printed output, cuts the needed storage space (e.g. binders, filing cabinet space, etc.) in half compared to single-sided printing.
If you regularly send or receive faxes, nothing beats a multifunction printer with builtin fax support (not even PC-based fax software). Some multifunction printers (such as my Brother color laser) even support sending faxes via the printer directly from your PC/laptop by way of an added printer driver (available from your PC's printer list).
If you go the route of a color laser printer, it is often worthwhile to go ahead and purchase an extra memory module to upgrade the laser's internal memory to the maximum supported -- especially with multifunction printers. The added memory expands the printer's capabilities sufficiently that you are unlikely to ever run out of memory whereas the base memory can often come up short when performing more advanced or demanding operations.
HTH
