Printers are like Chinese restaurants, cheesecake and bagels: everyone has her or his own personal favorite, and most people won't think your favorite is as good as their own.
Also, remember that printer companies are in the ink business, not the printer business; or so I was told by a printer rep at a trade show. He said if they sold printers at a "normal" retail price they would cost two to three times more.
Ira is IMHO spot on.
A major criteria for me in choosing any printer is how good is the manufacturer in keeping the drivers up to date with the latest changes in the OS and how long do they support drivers for a particular model. The availability of drivers can often be the limiting factor in the useful life span of a printer. I have had to get rid of printers that were still functional but the available drivers were no longer compatible with the latest release of MacOS. My experience has found Brother and Canon to be the best in this regard.
Most of the studies/reviews I have seen indicate ink jet prints are more expensive on a "per page" basis but have a lower "life cycle" cost because of the significantly lower cost of the printer itself. On the other hand lasers have a definite edge in life cycle costs in high volume situations. An additional cost consideration is the significantly higher per unit cost of toner cartridges. To replace all three cartridges in my old color laser would easily run $200. I switched to all ink jet when I realized one set of laser cartridges cost more than two heavy duty multi-function ink jet printers complete with two sets of high capacity refills each.
A third decision factor is how many photos/images do I print? In my experience I have never seen a
desktop laser that can equal the image quality of a good ink jet. In fact I know of several shops that have lasers for most printing but keep multiple ink jets for the sole purpose of printing images. As to the price of printing at home vs. printing at the pharmacy, the pharmacy MAY be less expensive but a good photo printer at home is WAY more convenient. But, if you don't print many photos, the local pharmacy may be the better way to go for that particular task.
COMMENT: No matter what your feelings are about multi-function printers. A year ago, when I went shopping for a new printer, unless I was looking at heavy duty "office" laser printers I was hard pressed to find a decent printer that did not have fax, copy, and scan functions. I ended up buying a more expensive printer than I had planned in order to avoid getting the multi-function features (and undesirable size/form factor).
