Digital BW, The Print

I recently bought a 2200 because some reviews said it did
good black and white printing.  But it has so much metamerism
that the black and white prints it makes are unacceptable.

My darkroom is just a dark corner of the basement and it needs
major upgrades in plumbing, electricity, and ventilation.
I was hoping to go all-digital and skip the upgrade but It
seems I'm still waiting for a simple-off-the-shelf solution
to digital black and white printing.

I like the 2200 because of its pigment-based inks, wide
format, 48-mil thick media spec, and flat feed tray.

Reading this forum and Photo.Net I can see people are desperate
and try a zillion different approaches to black and white ranging
from black-only to expensive RIPs to profilers to hextone printing.
Everyone has their special approach and no one method seems
to be endorsed by more than a few percent of users.

I'm reluctant to go to a hextone system because of all the hassles
I've heard about with it; the need to maintain TWO big, wide format
printers, the risk of voiding my extended warranties with third-party
inks, questions that have been raised here about color stability,
blackness, and metamerism, and the chip wars between ink
makers and Epson (Epson makes its money on INKS not printers).

My question is should I upgrade my darkroom and stick with darkroom
prints for B+W or will we SOON see a straightforward, off
the shelf solution to digital black-and-white printing?

---peter