Hi Daisy!
I have been dealing with inkjets for over 20 years. Any of the major brands are good printers, and that's no lie. What you have to do first is to define what you want to do with your printer.
#1 Just normal printing letter and documents, and an occasional simple graphic
Go with HP lower end, $70-100. HP is a workhorse, dependable, easy to change ink tanks, does its job and leaves you alone. Acceptable color pics, nothing like National Geographic.
#1 Normal printing, but you want to regularly print out color photos. You want uncompromising quality on the color prints.
Go Epson, any of the C (C80, C90, etc.) with photo print paper. For this get a printer that has individual color carts, as opposed to a single, three-color cart. If one color depletes, you must buy a new cart even if there is still ink in the other two.
Be aware: printers have come down in price and the quality has gone up. Where they make it up is the price of the ink cartridges. And man, they really nail you!
My Epson C80 produces "National Geographic" color and text. However: I just printed 40 pages of text. Partial print, with lots of white on each page. I exhausted a brand new cartridge, cost $35 +tax. That's higher than Kinkos! However, when I do a new graphic in photoshop and print it on pro glossy paper, it's totally awsome. Really. that's what I gotta' have or I'm not happy.
Also, with HP and Canon, you can buy generic ink carts over the internet at a fraction what they cost retail. HOWEVER, Epson has a chip on each cart that will not let you do that, you must buy Epson carts or they won't work. Not nice, Epson, not nice at all.
