I want to get a printer so I don't have to keep going to a net cafe or computer corner to print things. I'm not very picky in terms of pages per minute, resolution, and so on, but something I am not a big fan of is playing the ink cartridge game. So I've been looking into low-end color laser printers, but they're hard to find in retail stores.

Can anyone offer any suggestions with regards to either color laser printers which are widely available and will cost less than $250 or so, or inkjet printers which rape less in terms of ink usage and cost? As mentioned above, I'm not too picky about resolution or PPM, but I'd prefer a machine with a fairly small form factor, and it's also gotta be USB capable and preferably have native Mac drivers, though OS X's support for CUPS means just about anything should work. Multi-function machines with scanning support and such would be overkill.

Inkjets don't actually work anyway, so don't even bother. Go for a laser.

Yeah, I'm with ya, man, but the more I'm looking at things, the more I'm seeing I'm just not going to be able to get one around here without spending a quarter of my paycheck. It's not gonna happen.

HP's printers seem to be pretty solid, though I can't find any info on their ink usage or lack thereof. Those I can find around here, so that's probably what I'll pick up.

>HP's printers seem to be pretty solid, though I can't find any info on their ink usage or lack thereof.

HPs are good but among the most expensive printers as far as ink is concerned. In addition they don't have seperate colour cartridges, so that will incur extra costs.

I would look for a Canon (specifically the iP4xxx/iP5xxx models). Canons are pretty good all around (comparable to HP) and inkwise the cheapest I know of.