For the past couple of years at home we have been using two printers (actually, I have seldom used either of them - most printing happens for knitting patterns, or for school projects). We have a mono HP laser printer, and a Epson multi-function thing that does all kinds of crap that we have never used.
I just ordered their replacement;
This ladies, and gentlemen, is a colour laser printer (and never has the title of something had so many spelling differences between English and American English). It cost less than twice the price of the ink for our old black laser, and a full set of toners for it costs less than twice the price of the ink for our inkjet. The catch? The ink will print 10 times more pages than the inkjet - so it will pay for itself pretty damn quickly (we buy ink at an alarming rate).
There’s another bonus too - it has a network port, and will work happily with both the Mac and the PC at home. We have never had a printer that would play with both at the same time.
I can remember when colour laser printers were greeted with “Oooohs” and “Aaaahs” at the Computer Shopper Show in the early 1990s. I remember seeing the government officials arrive to put bank notes through them before the public were allowed to look… how times have changed. These beasts used to cost half the price of a family car - now they are cheap enough that anybody can afford them (well… most people).
I wonder what the next thing will be - that is currently prohibitively expensive, but will drop to a level where it becomes a utility item?