I recently got a good deal on an Epson C82 and it's great! Since its replacement, the C84 just came out, the C82 should be on continual clearance until the pipeline is empty. I've seen it for $50 or 60. AR every week in the ads.
. For me it's very fast, output quality is excellent (you would have to be very picky to find fault) - I get particularly good everyday picture printing results with the Kodak "Presentation Plus" 28 pound matte ($10. or less for 150 sheets).
. And now that they have the chip resetters, you can refill the ink tanks yourself or get 3rd party for as low as $3.50 each. My first ink is getting low and I have a resetter and ink on order. Hope it comes tomorrow!
. Only drawbacks are if you don't print a lot and noise. The nozzles can clog easily. Just be sure to always turn it off with its own power button when it won't be used for a while (that caps the heads to help prevent drying) and run several prints a week that exercize all the nozzles and you should have little problem.
. When you set the properties to plain paper (default), the feed gets noisy as it jostles the paper stack for each sheet to compensate for the doofs that don't riffle their paper-in stack prior to each run. So if you are a conscientious riffler, just set it to default to a quieter paper - the 'heavy matte' setting works fine with 24 pound plain paper.
A big selling point for the C84 is lower noise... Not much else different. And they are already on sale at $80. AR
. I have no problem with the Canons with separate ink tanks either - I've owned several of them in the distant past.
. Just no Lexmark or Dell (actualy lexmark with modified ink carts that you can only buy from Dell!) - clever, eh? And only the higher end HPs with the separate ink tanks - unless you want to refill yourself. Otherwise too espensive and I don't care for the U shaped paper path.
. Tip! HP often ships printers (esp low end models) with "Starter Ink Carts" . Meaning that they have much less ink in them than the refills will have. Get's the suckers on the milking line that much sooner...

.b.h.
