I'm in need of a printer for my PC. I'd like one that can make truly photo quality prints, yet still be good for plain black text jobs.  I can spend up to $300-400 or so, as long as it will make perfect photo prints up to 8.5" x 11" or so. I have a standard PC, Win XP, USB and Firewire or could just use the parallel port.  I looked at the Epson 1280, but it's not in stock locally and I hadn't done any research (or checked in with the hive mind) at the time.

What say you?

I have a 1280.
It rocks.
The only thing I don't like is Epson makes all their printers eat ink cartridges
like rosie odonnell eats marshmallows.
Thats how Epson makes their money I guess.
That aside, it is one of the most sharpest, color accurate printers made for $499.
Get it.

Get an  HP photosmart of some kind.  Nothing else comes close.

I have been into Canon printers for about 2 years and now use the Canon Pixma iP4000 www.newegg.com ($114 BEFORE rebate!)

The nice thing is that replacement ink is cheap and you can replace just the color you need (black, cyan, yellow, magenta and pigment black). It prints fantastic color photo prints and can also print duplex (front and back) borderless, etc.

I used to own Epson printers but got sick of the high ink prices, throwing away a partially full cartridge, proprietary cartridges that can't be refilled due to a 'kill' chip, and very poor reliability.

Canon is definately the way to go even if you choose a more expensive printer.

Quoted: Get an  HP photosmart of some kind.  Nothing else comes close.

I have a 7260 that has color reproduction so bad, it's amazing. The plain jane compac printer I had before beat the crap out of this POS when it came to color printing. I wouldn't GIVE this piece of crap away. The weekend after I get a good printer myself, I'm going to shoot this one.