Now, I know some of you are already tearing your hair out and saying, "hold on! Printers come with what are called starter cartridges that are only about half full, so you'll be lucky if you get a week's worth of printing out of them before you have to get more." That may be true; I haven't conducted an exhaustive survey of printer manufacturers and the amount of ink in their starter cartridges. But what I can say is that when researching this story I found that, according to some inkjet printer makers, starter inkjet cartridges sometimes come with a decent amount of ink.

The companies and printers I choose to look at may be exceptions to the rule, but I did check with Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark to make sure what was advertised was correct and not a misprint. Canon couldn't confirm the quantity of ink in its starter cartridges in time for this report.

Hewlett-Packard Deskjet D1660 - Myth Confirmed

Right now, HP is selling a inkjet printer on its Web site for $29.99, and you can get free shipping if you're willing to wait two business days. That's already a great deal, but way down at the bottom of the product page, the deal gets even better. Under the "what's in the box" heading, it says this printer comes with one HP60 black cartridge and one HP60 tricolor cartridge. The black cartridge promises about 200 pages of output, and the tricolor one will give you about 150, according to HP's site.

For replacement cartridges, HP offers a combo pack of HP60 ink that includes . That's two dollars more than the cost of the actual printer. HP's ink and toner section of its Web site says new tricolor cartrages delivers more color ink printouts than the starter tricolor cartridge, but it's a minimal increase; the replacement offers 165 pages versus the 150 in the starter cartridge. The black replacements promise the same 200 page yield as the starter.