I'm very keen on HP printers. They seem to turn up in offices all over the place, labouring diligently for years until they're replaced with a more exciting model that does lots of extra things, briefly, then breaks. My little one does black and white printing, and has an ethernet port. That's it, no display screen or anything.
On the other hand, it would be reasonable to assume that a Canon or Brother, if you can find a very simple one, would be similarly reliable. If you want a printer and scanner and fax and card reader and pretty lcd display, then I feel you're increasing the chance of failure.
So I'd vote for buying one with the bare minimum of features. Broken printers are infuriating.