I know the purpose of this topic and forum is to find frugal ways of doing things. But sometimes frugal is more work and/or less than satisfactory. Several years ago, I bit the bullet and bought a Brother P-Touch labeler. They have several products and some are reasonably priced. But I went "whole hog" and bought the most expensive one which cost me $100 at the time. The current similar model is much cheaper now - around $50, I think. You might try eBay. I bought it to make labels for my perennials. Everything else I have tried which have been mentioned here have to be redone frequently and each time time you lose much of the original plant info. The beauty of this printer is that it hooks up to your computer! I make the labels on the computer, same the label to a file on my computer, then print them out. These labels stay perfect in any weather and sun Forever! If you lose the label, you can look up the label in the computer and print out another one anytime. So you never lose all the original info for your plant. I know this isn't a frugal idea but our time is valuable too and saving time is as important as saving money. I still use mini-blinds but when you break them or your chickens run off with them, its so easy and quick to print up another one. You can make the type size as large or small as you want which is great for me now that I am older and I can't read the old labels with the smaller type size so make another and enlarge the type. Its an investment just like all your other good garden tools and worth it in the long run. Its handy to make labels for everything and they even have iron-on labels. Think about it, Barbara

I have an older Canon MP 750 (which is the 780 without a fax) its this huge work horse I got at Amazon for 120.00. Now there's a few left for around 300.00!!! It does everything but the laundry...without a fax. When new models come out, older models are drastically reduced...whether they are good or bad. Watch the discounts and read as many customer reviews as you can...no matter which company's model you are considering. Everybody makes a dud now and then. Every company has marketed a product that should have never been made. Read the customer reviews on Amazon, Cnet, New Egg, and Epinions. You don't have to study them. If a particular product won't work as advertised, it will be readily obvious. marf

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.

I have owned three Epsons and while they were superior to the print output of an HP I was able to try at home, I too noticed the ink dries quickly in them if you don't print often. I also found they were not very intuitive setting up for printing on 4"x6" photo paper. That may have changed/improved since I used my Epson (7+ years ago) but I still want to avoid one because of the ink issue. I'm going to do some comparisons with Canon and HP printers today and make a decision soon I hope. I am in the process of (re)starting my own home-based design business again. I had it for eight years before accepting an offer I couldn't refuse from a high tech company 7 years ago. I left them in September 2012 and wanted to get my travel to Southeast Asia out of the way before I got serious about going back to work.