Once you have a feel for the options, you’ll need to find out what the current prices are across the internet. That could influence your decision dramatically since some printers may be sold for much less than the MSRP while others might be sold for a price close to MSRP. The way to search for prices is via price search engines and cross reference with vendor ratings sites.

Price Search Engines

Pricegrabber is my favorite price search engine. They typically have reputable vendors, stock status and shipping price estimates. They also have an acceptable product search so you can limit your search just to specific features. The search isn’t as powerful as Newegg’s search, but the great number of vendors makes it more valuable. Another feature they offer is a vendor feedback system so you can get an instant feel for a vendor’s ratings and more quickly narrow down the price range.

Shopping.com is similar Pricegrabber, but some of the products/vendors are different. It also will calculate applicable tax into the final price estimate. Pricewatch is the original price search engine, but vendor quality is very suspect, shipping prices are often higher, and OEM goods are not always marked as such. Pricewatch is the most important price search engine to cross reference with a vendor ratings site.

Vendor Ratings

Vendor ratings sites poll customers of the vendor to see how pleased they were with their purchase from the vendor. If a vendor has a lot of reviews and very few negatives, then it is likely that you’ll have a good experience buying from that vendor, too. You can generally read comments from the customers to get a feel for how their purchase went and what exactly they think of the company.

The best ratings site is ResellerRatings. ResellerRatings does not give a company an option of opting out (unlike BizRate), and reviews are very tightly monitored for fraudulent claims, although they are always sure to make it clear that they aren’t responsible for the content on their site. Usually, if a company has a rating of 8 or higher, they are ok to buy from, and if they have a 9 or higher, they can generally be preferred. Always compare a company you’re looking to buy from to their ratings at ResellerRatings.

BizRate is the other popular vendor ratings sites. It grew faster than ResellerRatings and branched out into more than just computer and technology vendors. Bizrate will remove bad companies entirely from their listings (upon request of the company) so it isn’t quite as trustworthy as ResellerRatings.