Comparing different models

Hi all,

my hobbyist knowledge about printing devices is about 8 years old, and I need to help a friend buying new equipment for «personal office printing» (for teaching activities). I would appreciate a recommendation for a particular model or some pointers or clues about reading devices specs ... thank you for your help!

Let me outline the needs for my friend: to save space on her desk, she will prefer an «all in one» model, coupled with a scanner. She will mainly use her printer for black and white exercise sheets samples, that will be photocopied. Recto-verso printing will be rarely used, since the photocopier's recto-verso can be used instead. The main use of the scanner will be scanning geometric figures or schemes, that are simple figures with a few colors. It would be nice that scanned figures can be resized by a 2x or 3x factor and still look descent with printed.

Finally, she would like to have a color output capable device, mostly for occasional hobby activities, quality photo output is not important.

BTW, last time I carefully dived into devices specs, world was divided between ink jet printers with a printing resolution roughly equal to 300 dpi, and laser printers with a printing resolution going from 600 to 1200 dpi for the most expansive models. I recently checked specs from a few devices manufactured by HP, and discovered that most ink jet device enjoy a printing resolution from 600 up to 4800 dpi, with 1200 being the most common one, whereas laser printers continue to acknowledge 600 up to 1200 dpi resolution! Is there a mercantilist trick I am unaware of, or are these numbers honest? At the office where I work, we have an HP 4350 laser printer, that prints at 1200 dpi. How does the output of this printer compare to ink jet printers claimed to print at the same or an higher resolution?
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Again, thank you for your help!
Cheers,
Michaël
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