By volume, the ink in your unkjet cartridges costs seven times more than vintage champagne. Of course, there’s nothing inherently expensive about inkjet ink, but manufacturers have used proprietary interfaces (and now, the DMCA to engineer a market failure that allows them to command absurd margins on their consumables. This is why vendors are shipping $30 printers (presumably at a loss): because they plan on grabbing you by the nads and squeezing once you’re locked into the printer.
Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre.
(via /.)