You will rarely get the quality or price at home printing to even come close to Walmart/CVS, or if you're lucky to have a color lab in your area, them. We have a commercial color lab that we use for prints as large as you could find a truck to carry, and they also run a color print processor similar to Walmarts (except theirs is run by a professional color printer, not some high school part-timer) and their per print prices are just a bit above Walmarts. Inkjet printers will rarely get the number of prints per cartridge that they claim when doing photos, I've seen ones that claimed to get 150 prints run out at 30. By contrast, Dye-Sub printers usually use a ribbon and come with a set amount of paper to match the capacity of the ribbon. They will get the exact amount advertised, never more, never less (short of operator errors). The decent printers are relatively expensive to start with, but the per-print prices come close to the stores. It takes a LOT of prints to make up for the purchase price.
IMHO. Inkjet prints should be considered absolutely temporary, unless you are purchasing archival paper and inks from an ink or paper manufacturer (as in NOT the printer manufacturer, but a specialty ink/paper supplier). If that is the case, you can expect them to last longer, but this stuff is NOT cheap.
The environment that the prints live in is very important also. I had an experiment in my office a few years ago with 2 prints from our Fujix Dye-Transfer Printer (slightly different version of Dye-Sublimation) where I put one on the front of my cabinet about 5 feet below the ceiling Florescent lights, and another on the wall in the shadow of the cabinet (no direct light hitting it) After about 3 years, the one in the light had cracked (severly) and faded (slightly), but the one in the shade was practically brand new. This is the result of Ultraviolet damage, and can be minimized if you frame the photos with UV blocking glass or plexi. But to make a short story long, if you leave them out for people to see, they aren't going to last.
As of right now, we are using a couple of Sony SnapLab printers to print photos at events, They work fantastic, and have very cheap per-print cost for 4x6 prints ( around 30 cents each, 5x7 material is for some reason 3x the cost per print...) and while the printers are fantastic and fast (about 3 prints per minute), I doubt the prints would hold up to much more than a few years on the mantle unprotected, and the investment in the printer is significant. I've seen the Canon Selphy's and similar printers, and helped people set up various Kodak ones over the years, and they are very capable printers with the same benefits/detractions.
