HP has expanded its Instant Ink program to the UK

We’ve all been there: you dust off your printer to print out that important map, form or cover letter you need right now — and the cartridge is dryer than a hosepipe ban. Thankfully, the panicked emergency dash to Staples could become a thing of the past with HP Instant Ink, because your printer buys the ink for you. Already available in the US and launching now in Europe, the Instant Ink service takes the inconvenience out of ink, for a monthly fee. Sign up to Instant Ink and connect your Wi-Fi-enabled printer to the Internet, and it will monitor your ink levels, telling HP when you’re running low. Before you run out of ink, a new ink cartridge magically arrives. That costs you a small monthly fee instead of paying for cartridges whenever you need them. The trade-off is that the fee comes with a cap on how many pages you can print. That sounds a bit weird, at first blush — when you’ve parted with your hard-earned for a gadget, you want it to be able to use it as much as you like.