<< A lot of people have been mentioning this "Jetprint" paper. Can you purchase it from a regular stationary store? Is it a exclusive brand? Does it work better than the Epson paper? >>
Heh, not really. Jetprint has several different lines of photo paper, all of which are awful. You'll see the different papers in a row on the bottom shelf at office stores, in order of increasing price, and as the price increases, the technical-sounding numbers printed large on the cover increase, thereby convincing many that Jetprint has exactly the right tradeoff of price/quality for them. In fact, all the papers have a sickly, muddy green cast, and deteriorate quickly.
Epson's own paper is better than this, but makes everything orange. Kodak's is even oranger. Xerox paper is very, very crisp, but in epson printers the ink practically flakes off. The tone is much cooler than most other papers, which I like, but in many people's taste, it's much too cool for pictures of people. It also loses color detail noticably in the red/orange area, though the black/white detail (the important one for actually seeing detail; i.e. it may be miscolored, but it's still there) is noticably sharper than any other paper. Also, black ink seems to stick to the Xerox paper differently from colored ink, which leaves a visible reflective texture at certain angles; you can see which areas have black ink, and which are mainly color.
I would just buy a 100 pack of glossy Epson photo paper from costco for $20. It may not be on their web site, but it's been stocked consistantly at their B&M stores for years. Epson's color isn't horribly warm -- it's good for pictures of people -- and it holds the ink much better than Xerox. I would also go with off-brand inks. Usually, the color is different, but not necessarily worse.
I'm trying to find a deal on the 1270 or 1280 wide epson photo printers, but it's proving to be pretty difficult. Best I've found so far is refurb 1270 for ~$300 and new for ~$350, but at very disreputable dealers (i.e. operates under many names). Staples doesn't carry the 1270 (which I'd prefer, since the output is pretty much identical to the 1280 unless you've got a magnifier, and costs about $150 less), so I can't pm/coupon with them. I've been watching the forums but to no avail. I remember seeing a deal for the 2000P for $300, but I couldn't find it with the search function -- does anybody else remember that? The 2000P is the uber-expensive version of the 1280.
-=Marcus
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