i heard/read about this one...

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRINT/K5300/K5300.HTM

http://www.trustedreviews.com/printers/review/2007/06/08/Kodak-EasyShare-5300-All-in-One/p1

THEY say that your prints will last forever...cos they use some xtra kind of coating on the finished prints...Personally, I really don't know a whole lot...When you check around it's almost as bad as deciding on a new camera....

But you might try PC where I original heard about it to see if you may win it!

Here is a link that might be useful: Win a Printer

Cant go wrong with wall-mart, the Fuji system they use is a really good system, not great, but really good. Their paper and ink hold up really well. Buying good inks and paper to print from home will be as expensive, or more than just printing it from them. Regular paper and ink will fade fast

Anything exposed to light(UV) will fade. different types of lights emanate different levels of UV light.

Zjoe

Pam, have you considered uploading your photos to snapfish or one of the online photo services? You just tell them you want a 4x6, 8x10 or 5x7, whatever and they mail the pictures in a week or so. About $ .12 for 4x6's plus about a buck postage ($2.00 for 8x10's). The thing is, almost anything fades when exposed to direct light over time.

Hard to understand but photo paper and printing photos at home actually costs more than a cheap professional service. As Joe mentioned WalMart is cheap and fast and no postage fee.

Bean counter ... funny you asked that. I have been uploading to a CVS site where I can then pick them up ay my local store. So I solved my own problem .. thanks for your answers.

I'm not familar with the HP 6100. There are so many variations of HP ink jet printers. I used a HP 855 for many years. This printer was ok, but it prints did fade with time. I wanted a printer that would produce better prints and with more fade resistance. So, I moved up to a HP 3210xi All-in-One, and what an improvement!

The key in sorting out HP printer seem to be what kind of ink it uses. I chose one that uses HP's Vivera inks. This 3210xi has 6 ink cartridges, and a fixed print head in the printer. Older HP printers used ink cartridges with print heads on the cartridge, typically a 3-color cartridge and a black cartridge. Both printer types are yet available.

The ink cost for the new printer is much more compared to the older printer, but the results have been worth it, and the printer is much faster. Prints I made 8 months ago have been holding up. And, prints made on photo paper are superior to plain paper no matter the quality of the paper.

The fixed print heads require more attention by the printer to keep them clog free. My printer at intervals will automatically go into a maintence routine, and at time, purr to itself when it does a minor maintence. This takes some getting used to since it is a little startling at first when the printer kicks into one of these routines and when it has sat idle for a few minutes without any inout from the user.

My advice: Check the kind of ink and its fade resistance a printer uses and choose accordingly.

Use acid-free paper for best long term results.

I use a HP PhotoSmart printer - it uses the Vivera inks.

My photo's do not fade. My SIL has a Canon photo printer - her pictures do not hold up the way my HP ones do at all.

I have always been a fan of the high end HP printers however last August when I moved from Ohio to Massachusetts my good printer somehow got packed in a container of household goods that was not scheduled to arrive here for another 6 weeks.

For the first two weeks I was selecting photos to print and putting then on a flash drive which i then took to WalMart or my local camera store for printing but that was a real PITA.

I happened to be in Staples on an unrelated errand and I saw a Kodak ESP 7250 printer scanner on sale for $99. I needed a new scanner so I thought what the heck, I'll try it.

Right out of the box with the sample Kodak paper that came with the printer I was impressed, then I printed a couple 8x10 with some generic glossy photo paper and the best I could say is, they sucked.

I went in the printer setup and changed from draft to Best quality, but with the generic paper the prints were still a mess, often coming out with way too much ink, feeling wet and they smudged when you touched them.

Well, as they say, when all else fails, read the directions.

I read the directions and did the setup routine to match the printer & paper, but even though it improved, I was still not happy.

As I read the directions it said that Kodak recommended using only Kodak Paper, but who pays attention to that. That is just to promote purchasing their products, right?

WRONG- In further reading I discovered that Kodak Papers have a bar code printed on the back side of the paper. The printer reads that code and sets up the printer to the specific needs of that paper whether you use MATT, Semi-Gloss or Glossy paper. In fact, I used glossy in the 4x6 tray and Matt in the 8x10 tray and it worked fine.

Here is the catch I thought. They offer cheaper ink but get it back on higher priced paper, but to my surprise, when I priced the Kodak Paper at WalMart it was slightly cheaper than the HP paper.

I then printed 2 8x10 and 6 4x6's on this printer, then put the photos on my flash drive and had them printed at both Walmart & Staples to compare print quality. To my surprise the prints from my printer were equal to or better than those from the commercial printers.

I have a high end large format printer that I print most of my photos with, an epson R2400.

Last year for a theater gig I was shooting I needed a printer that can print on white DVDs, a little research and I came up with the Epson Artisan 50. I have to say I really only needed it for printing directly on white DVDs so I wasn't really concerned about photo printing.

Holy Moly, it prints outstanding prints. No kidding. Sharp, vibrant, not overly saturated, it does a most excellent job.

The printer is not expensive, I paid about $85, I bought online through B&H. $99 now at B&H.

Ink carts are reasonable, and I like that they are individual carts (5 individual colors plus a black, 6 total), so you only have to swap out an individual color and not a RGB multi-ink cart when just one color goes down.

I've had it for over a year now and it's still running fabulously. I used it to print our XMAS cards and other generic printing that doesn't require me to fire up my large format printer.

And FWIW, I print a fair number of black and white photos, it prints them exactly as they should be...black and white. No hint of any off-hue.

I haven't had a single problem with clogged heads, and have NEVER had to clean the heads, even if it's been off for several weeks. Fire it up and it prints a test grid perfectly.

Bought two more, one for each of my kids away at college.

I hate to sound like a shill, but it's a terrific printer that can do photos and DVD/CDs at a very reasonable price.