I've been giving this thread some thought (I do that sometimes) and it occurred to me to work out how much I pay for a set of cartridges for my Canon printer. It's about £50. So two sets of cartridges costs me slightly less that the printer (£110). So it does seem daft to pay so much when I could buy cheap cartridges, wear my printer out quicker, but buy another printer and still save money. However, one problem with this is that by using cheap cartridges the quality of my prints will gradually deteriorate but I won't notice. The second one is that I get used to a printer and don't really want to buy a new one. It's an interesting argument though. I get through about five sets of cartridges a year (just checked on my Amazon orders!), so I will spend about £250 a year. I could buy cheap cartridges for about a third of that, say £80, and buy another printer. Hmm . . .