The printer industry as a whole has really made it's money through consumables. The same holds true for things such as those single serve coffee makers. The money has never been in the machine itself, it's always in consumables.
As a printer manufacturer you cannot assume you will make any kind of money off the machine. They're probably fairly cheap to produce, but once you sell it and realize the profit that is it. The money from ink sales alone is where it is at.
While shopping for a printer it is always a great idea to see what ink will cost until of course you step out of the consumer printers (the standard $100-$200 ink jets) then you really have to go with quality, ink type etc. I own an R1800 which in itself is not an inexpensive printer. It is priced well for its class, but that is about it. Ink is $10-$12 a cartridge and you need at least 8 of them I believe (it is unplugged on my couch right now--don't ask). A continuos ink system is really the way to go for that to get the most prints out of the ink. On a consumer based printer, like my Epson 925 that is used for proofs and standard paper printing, the ink cartridges are $25-35 depending upon where I get them. That is in fact standard in any consumer printer.
To say that you should not buy or even pick up a free printer, regardless of the model is silly. This is just the way that it goes. Now if the MP160's cartridges were more than say $30 +/- a piece I would certainly say that for the quality of the machine you can certainly justify not buying that one. However, it would appear that the cartridges are priced as expected; about $30.
Your best bet if you are so very concerned with this is to research printers and try to determine how many pages you can print per cartridge. I know data such as that exists but know that this is the nature of the business. Printers don't make Canon money, the ink does.
Where the "don't buy because the refills cost..." logic would really apply is with things like cars and their maintenance and gas. If you buy a car that gets 10 miles a gallon then the car, as long as you own it, will wind up costing you much more than expected. You can spend $50k on a nice ass 4WD truck and then twice as much money on gas over time or you can spend $65k on a smaller sized BMW and less on gas as the mileage will undoubtedly be better. Random association I know, but the whole idea of consumables is never really considered in my opinion when shopping for any new item.
You could buy a 10 pack of BIC pens and a pad of paper and start writing.
