Apropos. I just invented 3D-way to implement color laser printer. Firstly you have enclosed chamber with transparent top. Then you blow some color powder in the chamber. Maybe you apply some electrostatic forces to speed up the process. When the dust has finally settled on the paper, you just zap it with laser. The melted powder adheres to the paper at appropriate points. You suck the loose powder back to its container and repeat the process with next color.
This is clearly more economical construction compared to Xerox-style laser printer. It collects the powder firstly on separate surface, heats that and then presses adhered shit to the paper.
Monochrome lasers aren't a big problem if you shop properly. You can do fine with a 1990s era laserjet. The bigger headache is color inkjets, and the ink they consume.
A home color inkjet won't do justice basically any photo, to be fair. You'll have a better time buying a B&W document printer then going to your local photo printing shop for high quality work.
Really? That'd be quite a regression. I had a mid-range home color inkjet in the year 2000 that made color prints which were easily as good as local photo printers.
You had to enable higher quality prints, and use the special photo paper, of which they provided samples with the printer.
Oh and you had to wait about 5 minutes for a full page print, maybe 10. But people would say "this came from your HOME printer?" And there's all these little HP logos on the back of the photo, like a real print shop.
I was so impressed by the quality that I printed my first resume on photo paper, and was slightly confused when people were less than blown away by the appearance :-)
Literally everybody (except printer makers) hates the printer landscape.
All we'd need is to pool money to design a cost-effective open source hardware modular monochrome laser printer with open firmware.