You are right, $100 printers don't do those things, but printers with $100 controllers inside them do. Most inkjet printers have minimal intelligence in the printer itself and are controlled by the PC. Lasers have a mixture of host-based control and units with intelligent controllers or motherboards inside them.
The printer industry is just like any other, there are companies that do their job very well and understand what's required and pay to do the job right, and there are other companies that are just looking to capitalize on the supplies revenue (toner and ink) but are selling their products into the market at a loss in order to gain market share. Most of those companies are under huge price pressure and looking at how to eliminate costs in every way possible. Inevitably, there will be crappy products put out as a result.
In response dhromed's question, I was responding to asuffield's comparison of printer software to what he normally sees on the desktop. FMPOV, comparing desktop apps to printers is like comparing bicycles to cameras. There is just much more involved in printing a page than what an application typically goes through to perform it's functions. That being said, there are some really sophisticated apps out there. The more sophisticated the application, the more likely that you're going to find problems with it - crashes, hangs, etc. Unfortunately for the printer manufacturer, their cheapest printers have to do some really sophisticated things and that is why there are all the problems out there with printers. IMO, if there was the kind of financial reward for good printer development that there is for good game development (by way of comparison with sophisticated apps), there would be a lot better printers being shipped. But, what happens is that people migrate to the cheapest printer and usually the end result is one gets what they pay for.
I'm not trying to make excuses for crappy printers because I've gone through a bunch myself, although I have one right now that I really like and also happened to be a bargain.