If you're in the market for a new inkjet printer, those super-cheap entry level machines you see when ordering your options by 'price lowest' can be really tempting. But don't go thinking that means you're getting a good deal - quite the opposite. Just as a drug dealer might give you a cheap first 'sample' to get you hooked, then hikes the price for all future transactions, printer manufacturers adopt a similar business model. They can easily recoup any shortfall from the discounted sale of the printer by selling its ink cartridges at massively overinflated prices. You're then kept on the hook, paying these exorbitant ink fees for the lifetime of the printer - a very lucrative earner for the printer companies. I vaguely recall a statistic that printer ink - at least the stuff you get in those tiny ink cartridges - is the most expensive liquid in the world by millilitre.
