I think Life_Saver makes a good point.
A lot of people don't even think about comparing the cost of doing it yourself against using a lab.
In LS case, it works out cheaper (just) to do it himself but I would question if he has ever worked this out before.
After all, a lot of people will think that doing it themselves MUST be cheaper.
Yet with the cost of the printer itself, paper, ink, wear and tear on the printer etc, in many countries (but obviously not Life_Savers), using a lab can save a lot of money.
I am quite surprised that the online photo printers (such as Jessops) have not started using this in their advertising.
After all, Joe Public always has a moan when he or she has to spend at least £50 on a new set of ink tanks so if he or she saw an advert from Jessops claiming to save 30 to 50% on his printing costs, he would jump at the chance.
Of course another problem is that to do photo quality prints at home, you need a photo quality printer. If however you are doing mainly non-photo printing a lot of the time, this works out even more expensive as printing letters and charts etc on a photo printer cost a LOT more than a non photo printer because even when not printing photos, they still use more ink.
So for me the anwer was easy.
I have a HP LaserJet for day to day b&w printing. I then have an all in one (printer/ scanner/ coppier) for day to day printing and then instead of spending even more money on a good quality photo printer, I just use an online lab for those occasions when I need a top quality photo printing.
As I said, in the UK because this is cheaper anyway, even if it cost the same, I have saved quite a bit of cash by not having to buy a photo printer in the first place.