If you care about print quality canon has always worked the best for me. But if I where in your situation I would probably just see who had the cheapest ink and go with that.
I'd agree with Canon. I have an old i320 in my office which cost next to nothing and is still going strong to this day, after what, six years I think.... knocks out fine quality prints....
I guess the modern equivalent of this is something like the PIXMA iP2702 (reviewed here, if you're interested in reading up more).
Basically extremely simple and cheap, with "impressive quality".