They could give you the printer for free and still come out smelling like a rose if you used it.

That perfectly good Apollo that I sent to scrap, because the ink was unavailable, cost me $10, new. HP's scheme was to get it back on ink. The #20 black cartridge was physically identical to the #29 my Deskjet 694 used, but contained only half as much ink. The 29 would not work in the Apollo tho. I tried. They must have wired something differently inside. HP prints an expiration date on their cartridges, so I bought ink on eBay, for a fraction of the retail price, as long as I could see it was not expired.

I gave $20 at Staples, for an Epson, then used aftermarket ink in it, at a fraction of Epson's price. A year or two later, Epson lost a class action suit that claimed Epson rigged the chip in their cartridges to stop printing, when there was still quite a bit of ink in the cartridge. Even with the discount certificate I received from Epson, the aftermarket ink was still a ton cheaper.

For the Canon, I use Office Depot refurbished cartridges. Work fine and cost a lot less.

Steve