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Most of us have printers at home, and if you’re like me, the trip to the store to buy ink is just depressing.

I have a pretty nice, year-old Hewlett-Packard all-in-one printer at home, and replacing the four ink cartridges costs $55 plus tax.

The entire printer only cost $150.

HP and the other printer manufacturers are making their profit by selling us ink, not printers.

Heck, I know some people who go printer shopping when it’s time for new ink.

So when HP approached me to talk about a new model for buying printers that includes an ongoing monthly fee, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it.

Here’s the pitch: Buy an eligible printer and sign up for HP’s Instant Ink service. The subscription levels and monthly fees are based on the number of pages you print, not on the amount of ink you use.

There are three subscription levels based on the number of pages you expect to print per month.

You can print up to 50 pages for $2.99 a month, 100 pages for $4.99 a month or 300 pages for $9.99 a month.

The printer is connected to the Internet and reports your monthly usage to HP. The printer also reports its ink cartridge levels. When you start running low on ink, HP automatically sends you a set of replacement ink.

The ink cartridge costs are included in the monthly fee, so you’ll never have to go buy ink again — it just shows up in your mailbox before you run out.

I did some quick calculating. The $4.99 per month plan includes 100 pages per month, so it costs $60 per year, which is just about what I pay for one set of ink for my printer.

My wife is a teacher, and she does a fair amount of printing at home. The 100-page plan is just about right for us.

So what sounded like a bunch of hot air — paying a monthly fee to use my printer — was starting to sound like it could save us money.

I know we go through at least two sets of ink cartridges per year.

I know you have some questions — I sure did — so here are some answers.

What printers are eligible?

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