I've got a HP PSC1215 that is 10+ years old, and don't agree with all of your complaints.
1. Cartridges last about 200 pages, which isn't great (I use a laserjet for anything I don't need in colour, so personally not a huge issue). They are rated for 500ish pages, so YMMV.
2. Never had this issue - I've had cartridges in for over a year, and they've still worked fine
3. Not the best of comparisons, as the printers often ship with 'trial' cartridges that contain much less ink than the replacements. That said, a set of Black+Colour cartridges will cost me about £30 (a little expensive really), or a third-party/refilled set will be about £15 (always worked fine for me; YMMV).
4. Never had this issue - I used it as a scanner recently without any cartridges in at all and it worked fine.
5. It's noisy when printing. I hadn't encountered any major bugs - mostly used with OS X, so can't really comment on Windows driver quality.
1. Cartridges last about 200 pages, which isn't great (I use a laserjet for anything I don't need in colour, so personally not a huge issue). They are rated for 500ish pages, so YMMV.
2. Never had this issue - I've had cartridges in for over a year, and they've still worked fine
3. Not the best of comparisons, as the printers often ship with 'trial' cartridges that contain much less ink than the replacements. That said, a set of Black+Colour cartridges will cost me about £30 (a little expensive really), or a third-party/refilled set will be about £15 (always worked fine for me; YMMV).
4. Never had this issue - I used it as a scanner recently without any cartridges in at all and it worked fine.
5. It's noisy when printing. I hadn't encountered any major bugs - mostly used with OS X, so can't really comment on Windows driver quality.