Before you rush out and buy that dirt-cheap printer you saw recently listed in a magazine or newspaper ad, a smart shopper should consider what many businesses look at before making a purchase - the TCO, or Total Cost of Ownership. The Total Cost of Ownership of an item factors in the entire cost of purchasing and maintaining an item throughout its usable life. In the case of a printer, the TCO should factor in the price of printer cartridges, how many pages a printer can output before changing cartridges, and the time between and cost of replacing other critical printer parts.

If you want to make every dollar count when buying a printer, consider how much it will cost *you* to use the printer to do the amount of work that *you* expect it to perform. You may be surprised to find that, especially if you plan on doing a lot of printing, a higher-priced printer may actually cost less to maintain the more you use it, while a lower-costing printer may require frequent re-purchases of cartridges.

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