Digital BW, The Print

So a few things -

1. To my eye most of the standard hextone curves seem designed to
favor shadow detail over rich blacks. So someone looking for _black_
might prefer a black-only print since, well, the blacks are going to
really be black.

2. Depending on how good your vision is, you might not be able to see
the dots in a 1440 black-only print. I sure can though.

3. It's a matter of taste - some people prefer higher contrast stuff,
some people prefer grainy stuff, some people prefer subtleties of
tonality... Black-only prints tend to have either very high or very
low contrast depending on the image. A really well-made black-only
print will often have a high-contrast, grainy look which is well
suited to some images.

4. The VM curves can be really hard to print, especially if you are
using a mac. It's possible that you're just not ekeing out as much
quality from that workflow as some others are. (I'm not sure I am
either, not trying to put you down :) ) 

5. Traditional darkroom photographers may not be the best judge here.
Reasons - 1. A lot of the time they'll be rather dismissive of digital
prints in the first place, and won't approach them with the same
critical eye they would approach silver prints. 2. The whole notion of
dots and grain is a different thing digitally than in the darkroom -
even large format negs start to show grain at relatively small
enlargements (16x20, for instance) so seeing dots is something they
will expect and probably not mind. 3. They probably haven't developed
a sophisticated eye for looking at inkjet prints yet. I say all of
this just because some of the very very best BW darkroom folks I know
are some of the very worst digital printmakers, and basically for the
reasons above. It's a whole different skill, a whole different
aesthetic, and a whole different sensibility, imho.

Bottom line though - if you make a print that you're proud of, who
cares what technology you used? :)