recommendations for HQ, colour CUPS printing with low running costs

[Dan MacDonald]

We currently have a Kodak ESP 5250 which is a fantastic AIO printer/scanner under Windows so sadly we have vbox installed just so we can print and scan stuff properly as Kodak offer no Linux support for this device at all. Under Linux the only driver is reverse engineered and its colour print quality and speed are very poor but what stands out about these Kodak printers is their cheap running costs- they claim a black and white A4 sheet costs around 2.25p to print, while a colour sheet works out at around 3.79p. Low running costs are more desirable than ever but Kodak's total lack of support for Linux and other free OSs means my next printer will NOT be a Kodak!

What I'm looking for is a printer for low volume, personal use that can match or excel this printer in both running costs and photo output quality but with full support for Linux. It will mainly be used for photo printing and ideally it will not require any binary blobs to fully use the printer under Linux and it will also be able to easily accept 3rd party refills or clone cartridges. I would consider both colour inkjets and colour laser printers, old and new so long as refills are cheaply and easily available. I may consider a colour A3 inkjet over an A4 laser but A3 isn't a must and £500 is about my limit.

A built-in scanner and networking are not essential but are plus points- certainly if it is a good quality scanner that works well with SANE and has easy wifi setup. I have seen the LinuxDeals site and that is a great Linux resource but unfortunately you cannot list the printers in terms of cost per colour and BW page. I'm sure the old CUPS site used to a have a (outdated and unmaintained maybe) list of recommended printers but I can't find any such page and openprinting seems to be having problems recently too.

I know HPs don't 'officially' support but still offer generally excellent support for Linux but I'm not sure if any of their printers can compete with Kodak for running costs? HP aren't particularly refill or clone cartridge friendly either in my experience. I hear Canon inkjets are much more refill/ clone friendly and often outdo HP in photo print quality but I suspect I won't be able to use their printers without their proprietary, binary and x86/64 only drivers?

Thanks very much for your advice!