On my stand-alone home PC (Pentium w/MMX, 200Mhz, WinME, 164MB RAM, 2 USB ports) I currently use an HP Deskjet 500 printer (black ink only) connected using a serial port. I would like to start using a color printer for pictures, cards and junk. However, I do orders of magnitude more printing in simple black and white. This stuff usually ends up in the garbage anyway so I don't want to spend any more money on it than I have to. Should I rig up 2 printers on my PC so that my high volume, low quality b&w printing goes to the black and white printer and my low volume, color printing goes to a new color printer? Does that save money in ink costs? How would I hook up 2 printers to the same PC? If I connect a new printer to a USB port (leaving my old printer on the serial port) will my PC recognize both printers and make them both available to my applications?

should work just fine.

easy peasy. i have four printers, two usb, one serial and one parallel and it works just fine!

thanks for the help! sounds like it shouldn't be a big deal.