We've had a whole herd of printers over the past few years, and there are quite a few things to note.

Tony's right about Epsons, we had a Stylus Colour something or the other a few years ago and it had a lot of problems. Heads clogged up, banding issues, general lameness. It didn't last long.

Another one to avoid is Lexmark. There is an all-in-one here which requires 100MB+ of drivers to get working, and brings the computer down to a crawl when it is in use. Not just that, but the cartridges are expensive, the print quality is lame and only the scanner works now. Total waste of time, I'd love to Office Space all over it - definately one to avoid.

As for other inkjets, I totally recommend HP. My Deskjet 5550 can sit at home idle for months on end and still be able to print flawlessly when I ask it to. The quality is great too. That one replaced a Deskjet 510 which was working for nearly 10 years! In fact it is in my garage and I bet it still works - its like a cross between a printer and a tank.

Laser though is defiantely the way forward. I bought my sister a Samsung ML-something (there is a ML1610 here which is on offer today at 50 pounds inc VAT if you are in the UK). The printer is cheap, the toner is comparatively a little expensive but not a great big deal. For light printing, its ideal. Fast, and the quality is fantastic. As a bonus, this Samsung and my HP both work near enough plug and play in CUPS on my Linux file/print server and on Mac.

Another alternative is Brother. At work we have a HL-5140, which never fails and I still haven't needed to change the toner in 10,000 pages! Very much recommended if you print a lot.