Digital BW, The Print

I'm giving a lot of thought to trying digital printing, most notably 
the Epson 2200.  I do mostly large format work (4X5) and some 35mm, 
generally all black and white.

I've been scanning my negs into a Microtek ScanMaker 4, using 
negative trays, and playing with them in Photoshop.  Problem is, I'm 
not sure whether the resolution of my scans are good enough for 
printing digitally.  On my monitor, 1200 dpi and below scans 
generally look soft and muddy, and usually need some amount of 
sharpening to look good on the screen.  The only printer I have right 
now is an HP 694C,which does an awful job of printing photographic 
material, so I can't take a look at the prints right now.  Before I 
jump in and invest $700 in a printer and a few hundred more for 
PiezographyBW stuff, I'd like to know if my scanner is up to snuff.  
If I need to replace that too, then I might just stay with all-silver 
for awhile yet.

The specs on the ScanMaker 4 are:

600 X 1200 dpi Optical Resolution
9600 X 9600 dpi Interpolated Resolution
3.4 DMax