Can anyone recommend a printer for me please?

[Eddas]

I am in need of an economical printer for a small charity. It needs to not eat ink (the current one does ) and be a colour printer but also a photo copier too.

My budget is as small as possible but the replacement ink cartridges need to be a good price too. The budget is small because it's for a charity run pre-school so we don't have lots of spare funds but the current printer is costing alot in ink.

I'm quite a technophobe so I haven't a clue what i'm looking at so would be very very grateful if anyone can help

TIA

I've been impressed by our Lexmark S600. The ink is much cheaper than the previous HP.

However, depending on volumes, you might be better off with a laser printer. Much cheaper to run, with the only downside being that you can't print photographs on glossy paper.

Thank you

I don't need to print photos so maybe a laserjet would be a good choice. Can you get laserjet printers that also photocopy? [dim emoticon]

Yes. They're now quite common. Google Colour laser multi-function printers.

Conventional wisdom is that laser printers are cheaper to run than inkjets, but I'm having trouble finding good cost per page figures for inkjets to compare. The one recent direct comparison I can find doesn't bear out the conventional wisdom.

www.digitalversus.com/brother-laser-printer-vs-lexmark-inkjet-printer-p974_8990_93.html

Sorry that won't make it easier.

I prefer my colour laser to the inkjets I had before. Ignoring the cost, it doesn't clog, which was a big problem with the inkjets and I rarely have to change the toner.

That's the same print system as the cheaper Lexmark I have, and they do appear to be very cheap to run. I'm not totally surprised that there are more expensive laser printers, but it's not clear that the laser printer that article compares is particularly cheap to run compared to other lasers. The Lexmark is probably one of the cheapest Inkjets to run. We were throwing HP 363 cartridges into our previous printer like sweeties, and they aren't cheap; I've just changed the black in the new Lexmark, and I think that's the first cartridge in several months.