For about the past year, I have been dreaming of owning a dye sub printer (well, they call then "thermal" printers now, but they are the same thing). I have been printing all my digital photos on a photo quality Epson. I can't knock the Epson, because it has been a pretty good printer. But, all inkjets have their flaws. This is what bothers me about inkjets:
1) They are slow. An 8x10 in photo quality takes about 20 minutes to print.
2) The ink cartridges never run out in sync, and they are expensive.
3) You need to print on them frequently, if you don't, they dry up and you have to go through the dreaded "cleaning" which wastes ink.
4) The print is drastically different depending on what type of paper you use. I was going insane until I started buying Ilford professional stock.
5) Setting up color profiles is difficult and unpredictable
6) They have a very short archival life. Stick one on the wall and one in a drawer that you never open. Compare them in a year or two.
7) Prints are expensive

Since I print about 150 sheets between Thanksgiving and Christmas, some of those flaws can really suck the life out of you.

My main concerns about a printer are: the cost per print, the archival life, the speed, the reliability, and, of course, the print quality.

KODAK 8500 Digital Photo Printer

So, I did some looking and found a thermal printer that was in my price range. It's the Kodak 8500, which retails for around $900. You can read about it at: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/printers/8500/8500.jhtml
I also picked up a pack of ribbon and paper, which will make 100 prints for about $160 ($1.60 per print). I totaled up how much it cost me to print 45 sheets of prints for my sister-in-law last Christmas on my inkjet, and it ended up over $2.00 per print considering how much the paper cost, and how much ink was used. (Some ink was used during cleaning the heads, and prints that needed to be redone due to whatever happened that made cleaning the head necessary). The cost per print is definitely acceptable, especially if you consider that places like snapfish.com charge over $3.00 per 8x10 print.

So, I go to the photo store, and I buy the printer. Ask all the questions that I can think of and then take it home. I then set it on the printer table and realize that I don't have any USB ports open. So, I unplug the external burner that I was having issues with and plug in the printer. It does its little plug and play thing and says that I should reboot. Being the jerk that I am, I don't and just send a picture to it to print. The print was awful. So, I figured that it will be fine after a reboot. I reboot and it then goes through its plug and play thing again....huh? It's like it didn't know that it was there, yet it showed up in available printers. I figured it was a fluke, and sent another print to it. Same crappy result. So, I do what every respectable techie does- I go online. I found a great resource at: http://www.robgalbraith.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php I read the entire forum and didn't see anyone having these issues. So, I tried some of the other suggestions on the forum. I updated the firmware and the driver. This did not change the print, *but* it did give me an extra matte option, and fixed the bug with it trying to reinstall the driver. After about 10 prints of garbage, I was about to chuck the printer. The only "calibration" that the printer has is to set neutral grey, so I decided to do that. The print that I got to use for calibration was crystal clear......which then made me think: "This is obviously not the printer's fault". I then thought maybe it was the file, so I sent through a different one.....same result.

At this point, it was midnight, I had had way too much coffee (if that is possible) and I was getting a bit irritated. It isn't the printer. It's not the file. So, I thought: "Maybe it's a bad USB cable!" I changed the cable....nope. No difference. Then, a brilliant thought came to me- what does the crappy working printer and the crappy working burner have in common? The same USB port! So, I pulled it off the back of my Dell and plugged it into the front..... Within 75 second I had a brilliantly printed picture with no printing flaws. *Sigh*....so I wasted all that time and $20 worth of supplies to find out it was a bad USB port.

However, I did end up updating my firmware and driver which solved an issue and gave me new options. I also learned some tricks while on the forum, and I ended up saving money due to the fact that I was about to buy a new burn drive, which I won't have to do now.

So, I am now *extremely* happy with this printer. It's photo quality, you can easily set up and store profiles, it prints an 8x10 in 75 second, it costs about $1.60 per print, it's archival life is about 60 years, and from what I have read, it is an extremely reliable printer. And, there is no "cleaning" that has to be done. It just works. You load a pack of 50 sheets of paper and install a 50 print ribbon and it just prints 50 with no problems. Once the paper is gone, load 50 more and change the ribbon. No messing with all the ink cartridges and bad paper feeds.

There is also an odd little bonus to these pictures, which I had to try out myself. They are *very* durable. They are extremely hard to rip. And, if you dump something on them, they are protected by their plastic layer. I poured some coffee (of course) on one of my junk ones, left it for a couple minutes, then wiped it right off. No inkjet will do that!

The Kodak 8500 definitely has a 5 coffee cup rating!