I am not sure if you are asking how to cut costs using your dad's color printer, or if you are looking for advice in buying a new printer, so here's an
opinion both ways:
It depends on your needs. There are tons of printers out there, with different advantages/disadvantages.
I personally have a HP 7500A. But I have the need for wide format printing, and it is also nice to be able to use the WiFi capabilities it has to let the wife print from her laptop or pad without having to go through my computer. The drawback is that it is a 4 tank printer, so I don't get true CMYK reproduction, but the quality is good enough for my needs. If I should need to print large format at high quality levels, I'd just take the file down to the print shop and have it done.
You mention that you print 1-2 sheets of high gloss, are you primarily printing photos? I would certainly hope you are not spending money on high gloss paper to print day-to-day stuff like field maps or a e-mail you want to archive
If you need to print photos at a higher quality level, that narrows the field down a bit, as you would likely want to look at a 6-8 tank printer (CMYK) such as a Canon Pixma series (the replacement for the i9900 series, which was once the industry standard for professional quality photo printing) over the "standard" 4 tank or less printers (RGB) (Technically, all printing is CMYK using software conversion but lately there has been a move towards differentiating printers by using the terms, however incorrectly.) There is a significant price difference, a CMYK printer is going to start in the $200.00 range and go up from there, but like anything else, you get what you pay for. Wide format narrows it down much further, but unless you have a specific need for it, there is no need to spend the money on it. Wide format can get expensive
fast, especially for pro quality.
I personally would avoid the single or dual cartridge printers for photos of any quality level, as the ink doesn't last long at all in those, and the print quality can vary a lot due to software issues in the CMYK translation. Also for photos, I have found HP printers to be better, especially for the long term, as they use pigmented ink rather than dye based inks. Thanks to the lawsuit a few years back, HP no longer kills their ink tanks before they actually go dry, so their biggest drawback is now gone. Look for a printer with large or "commercial" ink tanks. This would be along the lines of small business printers or shop printers. "Home" printers have small ink tanks and a shorter service life, and won't last if you are printing higher volumes or a lot of photos, which is still high volume due to the ink consumption/print times.
For a general purpose/every day printer that isn't going to print photos more than once or twice a year, or anything else more than a couple times a week, you are fine with just about anything, including single tank printers. I have had bad experiences with Lexmark and Epson printers, so don't recommend them. My best experiences have been with Canon and HP. Both have had better reliability in the long term, and the ink is readily available.
For general money saving tips, it is pretty straight forward.
If you are not printing a photo you want to keep, don't use gloss photo paper. For general printing or roughs, I use plain copy paper from the discount store. Don't pay extra for "Computer" or "inkjet" paper the cheap copier paper is the exact same stuff. The only difference is in brightness, they bleach the specialty paper more to make it brighter, and unless you really need a higher contrast for some reason, it's wasted money. And it is only a small difference in brightness to boot. (You practically have to hold them next to each other to see the difference).
Set your printer to the "draft" setting by default. Again, unless it's something you need to have high quality, why waste ink. Do you really need presentation quality for a coupon? (Thinking of my wife on that last one lol )
Don't waste money on those ink refill kits. I have seen a number of printers ruined by them, as they are a poor quality ink. Also, you have no guarantee of matching the ink type or composition for your printer, and can ruin the print head. If you shop around online, you can get proper ink cheap enough. The ink tank kits they sell are also the same cheap ink, with feeder tubes that require you to modify your printer (and void the warranty) so that they can bleed all over your desk as well as ruin your print head. Avoid them.
That's about all you can do that I can think of, other than don't print what you don't need to, I archive most things to a folder on my hard drive, and make a backup copy on disk if it's important enough. That is much cheaper than printing it.
