There is no "pat" answer. I have seen camera shutter failures as early as 9000 actuations, but I also have a PJ customer whose gear I clean regularly and he has over 1.8 MILLION shutter actuations on an original Nikon D3S body. (His backup D3S has only 1.1 Million shots on it.) I personally have 286,000 shots on my own Nikon D800E body that I bought new when they were introduced, it has an estimated shutter life expectancy of 250,000. Yes, my D850 is on its way, but the D800E will live as a backup for many years I am sure.

Used to work in a camera store, folks would sometimes bring a new lens back and tell us they got a BAD COPY of the lens. We would tell them that we will order a new lens for them on RUSH and have it the next day. We would actually just repack there return and give it back to them the next day and again remind them "if you have any difficulties please bring it back for another exchange". NEVER, as in NEVER did the person bring the lens back, if fact, most customers would, the next time they were in, thank us for getting them a GOOD LENS so quick. Moral of the story, manufacturing is so precise now that there is no difference in lenses from one to the next. I laugh every time I see on this thread that some one returns their BAD COPY for a good one. ALL CAMERA MANUFACTURES HAVE THE SAME QUALITY CONTROL FOLKS, MOST LENSES ARE IDENTICAL. The difference is the PHOTOGRAPHER, NOT THE LENS. Now, that said I am sure their is a bad apple in the bushel, but they are far more rare than folks think they are. Maybe one in 5000. I am sure some of you out there WILL DISAGREE, that's fine, everyone has their right to their opinion. I have owned and used over 120 Nikon, Sony and Canon lenses over my time, and NOT ONE was a BAD COPY. Yes, there may be some out their, but they are RARE, but unfortunately there are far more bad eyes out their than bad lenses.

I agree with having more than 1 printer, I have 3. A Pixma Pro 10 for very high quality 13X19 prints, a PRO 100 for other 13X19 plus 8X10 and 5X7 prints, and a Pixma TS9020 printer for other 8X10, 5X7 and 4X6 prints plus plain paper printing. The pro 10 has10 cartridges and a single 13X19 print cost averages out to about $5. A set of Canon cartridges goes for around $135. A set of cartridges for the pro 100 is around $125, but they go farther than the pro 10. The TS9020 has 6 cartridges and a set goes for around $90. The TS9020 printer makes very nice color (9200X1200 resolution) prints and if you're into black and white prints it makes exceptional B&W prints as it has a Grey cartridge. The printer its self costs around $180, is fairly compact and light, is wireless with all the latest print technology and it makes really nice plain paper prints, and, it's easy to use. I use it to print a lot of 5X7's and color documents along with screen prints and other work related printing when I work from home.

If you're not looking for archival museum quality prints but color prints that ARE good enough, the Pixma G1200, G2200, G3200, and G4200 printers are the new mega tank printers from Canon. They range in price from $250 to $400; 2 are wireless and all 4 have the same 4800X1200 resolution and 1 filling of the tanks is equivalent to about 30 sets of cartridges for a fraction of the cost.