Such a deal!

Buried at the bottom of the Afternoon Wrap at the WSJ today was a little blurb about how Dell had released a bare-bones, bottom of the line laser printer for $99; toner replacements, the article noted wryly, will set you back $65.

Whaaaaaat?

This, I have just got to see. So I went to Dell, and I found it .

It’s cute. It’s little. It’s slower than slow. Hey, what do you want for just under a hundred bucks?! But I had to laugh about the toner. Yeah, the toner costs 65% of the total cost of the printer.

Now, given a somewhat infrequent printing habit that I suspect you’d have if you were the sort of person who would be looking for a slow monster like this, hey! Who cares? You probably won’t go through a cartridge a year.

But why do I get the feeling that people will be saying to themselves, “Hmm, it’ll probably be cheaper to just buy a new printer, rather than replace the cartridge…” come next year?!