I personally have had several HP all in ones and love them but if I were buying now I would definitely have to investigate the new Kodac printers that have such cheap ink. I have been really impressed by them, the cost of ink alone is a major reason to consider them.

I have had zero problems with my HP officejet 6210xi.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kodac printers

Suzi,
I have a Canon Pixma MP500- Scanner/Printer combo, it is at least 3 yrs. old. I am sure there are newer models. I have had no problems. I think my usage is about the same as yours. The cartridges do not dry out and seem to last. Though if I did a lot of photo printing I'm sure this would be different. I like the fact that the colors are individual. It has 2 black cartridges, which I like since that is what I use the most. When it indicates a cartridge is low I have lots of time before it truely runs out of ink.
Pam

As you sail through the sea of available printers please be sure to include in your decision process the company's proposed longevity of pictures. A picture quality claim may be impressive, but we must remember that printer inks are still in their infancy stage. Personally any picture that is of special value to me still gets printed by a professional purveyor.

As a suggestion it might be more helpful to you to pare your choice down to several specific models and then ask for opinions or experiences. There is not much help if 20-30 members cite their ownership/opinions on 20-30 different makes/models.

DA

DA is right, I can tell you my HP is great but it is 3 years old and no longer available so the comment is invalid. Use the link below to do some comparisons. Years ago I had a great Epson that refused to die. Eventually I needed to get up to date and replaced it with another Epson, biggest printer mistake I ever made.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compare printers

For a regular printer, Consumer Reports suggests you check the Canon Pixma iP4500, the HP Photosmart D7560 or D5460, or the HP D7460 if you want/need wireless. For snapshot printers, check the Epson PictureMate Dash PM260 or the Epson PictureMate Zoom PM290. For all-in-one printers, check out the Canon Pixma MP970 for photo editing, Epson Stylus CX9475 Fax for wireless or for all around value, the HP Photosmart C6380 and the Canon Pixma MP520.

I've got a HP All-In-One prnter, HP Photosmart 3210xi. Its a printer, copier, and scanner. This particular model has USB port. The next model changed the ports, but was essentially the same machine inside.

I got this printer because I needed to have achival quality ink for genealogical records, and to print photos. This printer uses 6 cartridges of HP's Vivera ink, and fixed print heads. This printer has worked well for me. The inks are pricey, but the black cartidge does print a reasonable number of pages. To date, I have run 8000 sheets of paper through this machine. I was concerned about clogging of fixed print heads, but that has not occurred. However, I do follow, without fail, HP's instruction to shut the printer off and allow time for it to store the print heads, before removing power.

Other HP printers had the print head on the ink catridges, thus, a clogged print head could be fixed by changing the cartridge. The fixed print head was a concern of mine since I had bad experience with a Tektronix printer with fixed heads at my work (when ink jets first became available way back in the 1980s.) Happily, I have not had a problem with my print heads and I have owned this printer for 2 years.

The printer does have a habit that startles the user until he becomes familar with it. The printer has an automatic maintence program built-in to keep the heads and ink supply in shape. Periodically, the maintence program will start and may startle the user. The printer is not available for use while the maintence routine runs. There is no recourse but to wait. The maintence routine lasts from 30 sec to 1 minute.

Ink cartridges are sold singlely, or in a pack of 6 cartridges with 50 sheets of 4"x6" photo paper. This photo pack, at first, appears to be a good deal until one learns that there is less ink in these cartridges than the regular ones. There is just enough ink to print the number of photo sheets in the package. I found it was economical to buy a couple of these photo packs collecting more photo paper than I would use for awhile, and then switch to buying the regular cartridges.

The inks and printer does print nice photos when the special photo paper is used. One caveat: the ink is not as resistant to running if exposed to water droplets as one might hope based on advertisements. It smears even after a drying time of 1 day. But protect the ink from wetting, and the results are fine.

for me these days the cost of ink is just crazy. When I started looking at the new Kodac all in one's and their advertisements about the ink I did not think it would be much different but it really is way way cheaper, their black is $9.99 a cartridge and the color cartridge is $14.99 and their color cartridge has 5 colors in it instead of 3 so it is supposed to produce more vivid colors. After seeing some demos I was very impressed. That much savings on ink could buy me something else I really need like um new shoes LOL!

I used to have a HP all-in-one. Now I have a Kodak ESP-7. I love it. The photos are excellent and the ink is cheap. I've had it for just over a month now. The photos are actually a bit clearer and vivid than when I get them printed at Walmart at their Kodak kiosk. Only drawback is you must use Kodak photo paper so that it can read the barcode on the back of the photo paper. But 135 sheets of 4 x 6 photo paper plus an extra color cartridge is only $19.95

Thanks everyone! One more question...change of ports was mentioned & wonder if my 2004 Dell 2400 Series will accomodate a port other than USB.

Pretty obvious I'm not very savvy...

Thanks,
Suzi

In 2004 printers were in the process of evolving into USB connectivity. They did however quite regularly support parallel connections also. Just take a look at the back of the printer and see if a wider than higher pin connector is available. You will require a parallel cable of course and quite possibley a driver from a disk that was included in the box if Windows doesn't recognize the printer on boot.

Do you by chance still have the installation instructions? If so, the appropriate installation information would be there.

DA