John Brock wrote:

My siblings and I bought our 80-some year old mother a new iMac
for Christmas, and her Epson Stylus Color 740 -- unsupported by
Snow Leopard -- is now junk. So we'd like to hear recommendations
for a new printer.

We're not interested in speed or ultra-high quality photos or
multi-function; we're looking for robustness and simplicity above
all. We'd like our mother to be able to change the ink cartridges
by herself! Beyond that, we're looking for a major brand with good
OS X support, and not overly expensive (especially the ink). Under
$200 certainly, and under $100 would be nice. Given these criteria,
what would be the best choice?

I think without doubt I'd go for the Canon Pixma range. They are 'photo'
printers, and maybe cost a little more than the average, but I've had
two now, and very happy with them (currently using an iP4500).

They also have some features you'll probably never use (Duplex and CD
printing for example, although Duplex can be handier than you think).
However, they are also quite robust in construction, and these use 5
cartridges (CMYK for photo, and larger capacity 'cheaper' one for black
text). I have found that the cartridges last pretty well, and probably
get somewhere near the quoted 400 pages yield, and they're not too
expensive either (when bought one at a time). I've not had to clean the
head in the last 18 months either.

The Canon software seems to be reliable too.

I have also used others in the past, but found the following:

Lexmark: poor print quality, and *very* expensive ink.

Epson: possibly the best photo quality, cheap inks, but as others say,
you do spend a lot of ink in cleaning the heads. If they're left unused
for a while they *will* clog.

HP: Used to be *the* printer to buy, but in recent years they have
become flimsy, and not so good with print quality. The software they use
absolutely sucks too. I've recently tried to install these onto Windows
machines, and it's a nightmare getting them to work properly (or at
all).

If you don't need colour at all, then I agree with others, a laser will
be the cheapest and most reliable printer to use. The best I have used
myself are Kyocera and HP.

If you can find an older HP on eBay, such as a Laserjet 4100, it will
last for decades as a home printer, and can manage over 10,000 pages on
a cartridge - which can be got very cheaply on eBay (I get them for
under £20 in the UK). It may be easiest to connect these via Ethernet
though, and they will then just work.

--
Andy Hewitt
http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/