The latest high end HP all-in-one printers have fixed ink jets and separate ink cartridges. Both types of HP printers, ink jets on the cartridge and fixed print heads, can be found. Clogging of ink jet heads has always been a big problem and that is why initially, HP started with the print head on the cartridge. It was a patented feature. Later, HP develped a way to keep fixed print heads clear, and then they began to introduce fixed print head printers. Your grainy prints can have two root causes: 1) Poor scan and resultant poor file; 2) Poor printing of a good or bad file. I have an HP flat bed scanner that is going on 10 yrs old and that is the one I rely on when I need to have total control of a scan. it has a rugged mechanism and still produces excellent results. My last two HP all-in-one printers have done excellent work when copying photos. Both of these have fixed print heads. The alignment sensor failed on my first HP all-in-one otherwise I'd still be using it. I can't complain. I had run 11,700 pages through it. I discovered that the ink cartridges were being phased out for this printer (type 02) do I decided to update to a later printer. Glad I did. Although there are fewer cartridges, color prints are just as good and the ink has better smudge resistance.

I thought I'd report back for people who are still looking. I ended up getting the Canon Pixma MX850 (after seeing the review at pcmag.com which suggested that there were substantial improvements over the earlier model (they were not directly comparing it to the mx700, but rather a recent MP??? model. Nevertheless, it sounded like this 850 was better than what came before (the details about how skip my mind, but I know in readin it, it seemed worthwhile). I had someone set up the Canon on Friday. It is big (and as Jane said, it's attractive and seems commercial in quality). I LOVE IT. The software is not bulky like HP, and it was easy to connect the printer to my desktop, my daughter's, my husband's laptop and my laptop. I can scan documents and the wonderful lcd display will walk me through simple steps. It asks if I'm scanning from the platen or document feeder, if it should be saved to a pc or faxed or emailed (I believe those were the choices). Then you can choose which computer to receive the scan (that computer must be on to receive it - otherwise I think it could be sent as an email attachment to be loaded on the computer later), and whether it should be saved as a pdf file or jpg. There are other formats for saving it in as well but I haven't tried that yet. There's also a way to optically capture the text and turn it into a text document which I think can be edited (for those without the expensive Acrobat Writer which allows editing of PDF files but costs a few hundred dollars). I know some of the above is very simple and naive, but I've included for folks like myself who have no idea what they were looking for. It easily prints in color or black. It has a duplexer. I'm not sure I'll care that much about printing two-sided documents, but I love the either of feeding 2-sided documents in the ADF (auto document feeder) and being able to copy or scan them without standing there and changing pages. That was a huge factor for me in getting this over the MX700 which doesn't have a duplexer. At first I hadn't considered the convenience of copying and scanning 2-sided documents by loading the sheets in the ADF, pressing a button and walking away. That's convenient. This printer is also remarkably quiet. I was used to loud functioning from my HP PSC 950 and didn't realize printers could be so quiet. I could even carry on a business call without interference. I'm thrilled with this machine (which Dell has for $239 - best price I found). Even my husband who saw no reason for obsessing about this choice is amazed at how much functionality and ease of use is packed into a $240 machine. When he saw what it did, he assumed I'd paid over $500. Lynn.

Back on the subject of Brother printers (inkjet). Several years ago, I had need for a fax machine, so I went to Staples in search of something inexpensive. I was surprised to find out that I could buy a multi-function Brother machine, including fax for only $10 more than a fax alone. So I bought one for around $70. It uses separate ink cartridges, so cost of maintaining ink is very reasonable. I still have the printer, sitting in a box, because the HP inkjet I've been using refuses to die. Perhaps some day I'll be able to make use unless drivers are not available. It does have drivers for Windows 7; I don't know about Windows 8. I don't know if it could take rough usage since all parts seem to be plastic, but I am not hard on fixtures and appliances :-). I really don't print enough to need a laser printer, but the crisp, sharp look can't be beat.

Is it possible you accidentally set, within in your word processor, documents to print larger than 8ý"x11" (letter sized)? If so, maybe the printer is expecting larger paper from the manual slot? (And beeping when it doesn't find it?) If not, maybe go into "Printers and Faxes" (in Windows Control Panel), right click your Brother printer, select Properties and look through the settings for something such as "Paper Source"? And "Paper Size"? Just thinking what I'd probably do if it were me though, I'm not a tech.