Printers, minibars, and cell-phone plans…what are you getting yourself into?
The printer. It’s one of the most common peripherals in the computer age and so cheap — at first blush, anyway — that stores often give them away when you buy a PC. Yet how many people realize, when they walk out of CompUSA, a nice $99 inkjet model tucked under their arm, that it’s likely they’ve just committed themselves to spending nearly $1,500 on ink cartridges over the next four years? (In fact, only about 3 percent realize it, according to Stanford economist Robert Hall.)