> And if you need to print photos, order them online from a professional photo printing service.
If you're in the need (like me right now) to print +300 photos in several formats, even shopping at best prices around me, that's something like 150€ for them. For that kind of price I could get a nice home printer, supplies, and afterwards just keep the printer for the future.
I'd like to see your BOM. ;) I'd estimate 10-20 EUR for high quality paper; undoubtedly the ink supplied with the printer will not be enough to print 300 photos, that's another 40-80 EUR, leaving 50-100 EUR for the printer. Are the prints from a ~100 EUR printer really equivalent to professionally developed prints?
And assuming the OP meant an inkjet printer, they'll probably go through 4 whole sets of cartridges to print 300 photos.
And they'll need to "realign the heads" and "clean the nozzles" at least 17 times, which will consume hours of your time, paper, and probably another whole set of cartridges too.
I battled with Epson and HP inkjets for years - I haven't looked back since I bought a small black and white Brother laser a couple of years back. No more wasting time, no more new cartridges every 5 pages - you just hit print and it prints.
I think that'd be a use-case for HPs "ink hostage" (instant ink or something like that), as another commenter put it, program.
If i recall right, i even read somewhere here on HN that someone basically printed full page color prints all day long and HP happily keeps sending him fresh cartridges, which is, at the rate he is paying monthly, a steal...
I guess nothing stops you from ending your membership after you're done with your printouts :)
If you're in the need (like me right now) to print +300 photos in several formats, even shopping at best prices around me, that's something like 150€ for them. For that kind of price I could get a nice home printer, supplies, and afterwards just keep the printer for the future.