Printer choice
The Paintjet is great for color graphics, but the text is pretty lame.
My favorite home use 24 pin color printer is the Star NX2420 Rainbow.
About $339 (at least that's what we sell it for). According to their
specs, it runs about 300 cps draft, 100 cps letter quality. It's closer to
280 draft/80 LQ since most people don't use the 12 cpi for normal stuff.
Your choice of rear or bottom feed, push or pull tractor, no paperbail
(uses a very wide guide attached to the printhead… keeps it from jamming
on narrow lables, etc., and 7 or 8 built in fonts. Also comes with a 2
year warranty.
As for the color, it uses a multicolor ribbon and is very easy to program
for. For just using color text, just insert the command ((C))x in your
text to change colors. x is a number from 1-7. When a color ribbon is
detected in the printer, the printer intercepts the ((C))x and changes to
the proper color.