print out, rip off

i am currently working in an Mexican factory that configures Chinese-produced printers to sell in the North American market. this configuration is quite interesting:

the same 'base printer' is actually used to make dozens of different models, which are sold to the consumer at different prices. the difference between the models? well, first, software is loaded into the printer to determine it's speed ... yes, that's right: you might pay double the price for a printer which prints more pages per minute, when in fact the slow printers are exactly the same, they've just been programmed to work more slowly!

other differences that affect the price: how nice a box the printer comes in, the colour of it's plastic casing, and the size of it's paper trays!

and the real money is made on the ink cartridges, of course ...