If you don't print photos with your printer you can save a lot of money in the long run with an entry level, black and white, laser printer. Not only are they cheaper to use, the quality of printing is better. We have a Brother HL1435 which is over 2 years old and still using the original cartridge, about 4 or 5 printings per week. I just got so annoyed with constantly replacing cartridges I thought I would comment.

Understood on the cost of ink. I did a scan on the web and while the reviews I found were all good or better for the X8350 there was a universal complaint about the cost of ink, that's were the money is, the printer mfgs don't make any money on the printer itself. I also read the lower cost cartridges I saw at BJs are low capacity, not the long waited for affordable ink from Lexmark (others).

I do like to have color for business documents that come in email and have yellow high light or other means of showing revisions. While I can do on line, read on computer, I do like on bigger papers to print it out and revert to hand-written notes that I'll use for telephone or for guide when I go back on the computer to comment.

We did have lazer printers for a number of years and they worked great, and were supplied by my employer, they no longer are provided. Lazer printers had been very expensive, but I have noted the decline in cost of lazer printers and have seen advice on their economy of cost per page for "ink". I can't say I've seen a lower cost lazer AOI (multi-function):Scan/Print/FAX, at an affordable cost.

Jerry check the other thread regarding the 1200 error.

I resurrect this thread to give a brief report on the X8350 which I put into service about a week ago. The delay in giving this brief review/appraisal is due to the fact there was a problem. I went to Lexmark web-tech-support, which was very slow, but expert. All the time I was thinking I should take the color cartridge out and clean the print head with 91% alcohol. But as it is a new printer I didn't want to do anything to invalidate the warranty. After one go-around with tech-support telling them I think the megenta head on the color cartridge is non-op they came back, after about 3 days, to tell me to "wick" the color cartridge, using water. I used 91% alcohol. This fixed the problem.

To the review (assuming a good initial color cartridge): Nice unit, excellent (wonderful) full color status/maintenance display, very intuitive. It looks to be at least one BIG step above the X4270 I had. I am very pleased, and being a refill the ink guy, I can say Lexmark still makes an easy to refill cartridge (I have not yet done so, but I've have given a close look), and the cartridges, while small, are rather inexpensive, meaning it isn't expensive to replace the cartridge after a couple of bulk ink refills.