If most of your printing will be black and white, give serious consideration to two printers. A low end laser for less than $300 and a low to mid inkjet - $100 or more. The laser will give you lots of excellent quality printing and a low per page cost. The inkjet will handle your special needs and not set you back a fortune. At home, I have a Brother laser, an HP All-in-one scanner-printer-copier, and a HP1100 inkjet that I bought used. The 1100 is a little finiky but is a large format printer. I can do 11x17 prints with it. It only cost me $60 and is worth the aggrivation for those special jobs. If I were to pick just one, the All-in-one would win hands down. It is a real do everything machine. Even does full color copies (beats a drive to Kinkos and a buck a page).
Big Jim, Yeah, pretty much all I want is a printer that will do really good B/W text.(who uses coloured text?) But, also, I would also like to do the odd colour picture, like sort of every once in a while. I've never really needed a printer as such, but I suppose it would save using the printer at work.
I saw a used HP laser, a home use one, for $10 at a garage sale the other day. It would be mine but I got really nasty vibes from the wife when I looked too close.
Big Jim, I certainly hear you there mate!. I went to a recent Ham swap-meet and I clapped my eyes on an elderly Tait 2m set and my partner said that if I bought it, I'd be locked out when I got home, but a long story short, I'm still using the same 2m set and I did sleep inside the house that night!.