Ten years ago a printer was bought in our household. It was HP DeskJet 520, black and white mod, and did cost a fortune – over $1000. It was a good one, 300dpi, and was used for 8 years. I used to clean it’s parts with alcohol, used vacuum cleaner several times as well. It may be still there, printing and making lots of noise.
So, it’s cost scared me so much that I got hpdeskjetphobia, I always avoided buying printers. I did see various printing facilities, e.g. a printing room in a bank, where transaction logs were printed on paper by large Kyoceras. Those noisy bastards were all around but not near me. In my previous job printers were outsourced from a company, and nearest one was five or six rooms away. Those were big and looked expensive. All printers looked to me expensive.
Now I decided I need one for my home office. I just went to a nearest shop, and the first one (HP PSC 1510) looked like the one I need. It even has scanner and copying functions! All for 100Eur. I took it home, opened the box, surprise surprise, it had CD for my Mac, with OCR software and some image management tool. All for 100 Eur. I don’t know how much I’ll have to pay for ink yet, but there was some included. For same 100 Eur.
I printed several photos on A4 photopaper and those looked amazing. Sure, now I need a digital camera. There is a story, why I have none yet. See, 8 years ago I was kind of early adopter. I did lots of photo footage for my school’s homepage with a camera, that did cost $1000 and had 640×480 resolution (borrowed, not own one). But I guess I have yet another phobia to kill and find out that now digital cameras are commodity as well. Maybe some pictures will end up in Wikimedia Commons? :)
domas mituzas 
Why buy inkjet printer, when lasers are so cheap nowadays?
colors!!! If lasers are not in store shelves, then they’re not commodity!
I went through the same thing with my old Deskjet 500C. It cost me about $400 at the time, and I was just a starving student. At the time though, it sure was slick. You had change inkjet cartridges though when you wanted to print in color because it only held one at a time. They last a long time though.
As far as your camera goes, my wife just went through the comparison process. She went with a Canon powershot A610. It’s awesome. Personally what I like about it most is that the viewing screen flips out and rotates. It’s great for taking pictures of yourself.