I bought a colour inkjet way back and never really used it because of the high cost of refills. Then I bought an Okipage 4w which was replaced with an Oki 8w upon its demise. Once the XP SP1 was installed, however, I started having trouble with it, as there was no XP driver available for it.
Last year, then, I bought a Brother HL-1430. It set me back about DKK 1000 (USD 166 or thereabouts) and that included a cartridge which was said to be able to do about 500 prints. That one's still running now. A new cartridge bought at the same time, but for about 2500 prints, cost me about DKK 750 at the time.
This Brother is connected through the parallel port, but it can also be connected through USB. I'm very happy with it, and I use it for my job as well, as I work from home.