STARTUP TIME
I have seen printers that take up to five minutes to power on, and get ready. So if you needed a print in a hurry, you will have to wait for the printer to warm up and initialise. 

INK AVAILABILITY
Check ink pricing and availability when you buy a printer; and make sure you understand the costs involved. There is a problem of ink availability with some brands, so ensure the inks are easily available and that the company has a telephone order system.

PHOTO PRINTER
Most brands sell printers as regular small office/home printers and photo printers. Though a regular printer can print photos, they will not be as vivid as the photo printer. But photo printers will be expensive and with costlier inks.

So if you plan to do a lot of photos, stick to a regular printer.

SPEED AND RESOLUTION
A resolution of 600x600 is great for documents, and a 1200x1200 resolution ideal for pictures. If you still want to buy a printer with a 3000 resolution, let me tell you that it will take longer to print, eat up a lot more ink and be expensive. So make sure you choose the resolution ideal for your nature of work — for basic photo copy and printouts a 600x600 resolution is great, a 1200x1200 should do for photo work. And don’t be bothered by the pages per minute speed if you are not going to spew out hundreds of prints every day.  

... contd.