A last-minute friendly gift reminder: don’t forget to buy USB cables.

By now, everyone should know that printers don’t come with USB cables. But, it is still one of the number one complaints people have when setting up a printer, so obviously there are still some people out there that expect their printers to come with these cables. It’s not unfair or foolish to think that, since for a long time printer manufacturers were very happy to give us free parallel cables, which were more expensive than today’s USB cables. But, that’s just not the way it is.

Also, don’t ever buy the cable that the salesman recommends to you. They will always always try to sell you an expensive gold-tipped cable and tell you that you “need it.” No, you don’t. You need any USB cable, and the fact that one is coated with solid gold does not make any difference. Find the cheapest USB cable available - it will work fine. The markup on cables is huge for places like Staples and CompUSA and it gets worse and worse depending on how expensive the cables are. They might get a basic cable for $5 wholesale and a fancy one for $8, but they will charge $20 for the basic one and $50 for the fancy one.