Digital BW, The Print

> Would anyone like to make any helpful comments or suggestions. Am I 
leaving out other options? ...

Sounds to me like you've done your homework pretty well. When I hear 
the words "trouble free", "perfection" and "black and white" in the 
same sentence I think of Pieziography with Piezotone inks. But you're 
right, the inks are very expensive. Posts in this forum indicate a 
new version of Pieziography to be announced soon so stand by. Take 
the hype with a grain of salt and wait for users reports.

Epson has a RIP available for the 2200 that prints great (although 
not quite as great as Pieziography) black and white for $200 and uses 
the stock Epson inks. It seems some folks are having a hard time 
getting it to work right on their machine so beware. Personally, its 
worked great for me and I use it for all but my most treasured prints.
For those most treasured prints I'll use Pieziography, but only for 
those prints because of the cost of the ink -- and Pieziography uses 
a lot of ink. The Epson RIP is capable of making a black and white 
print that to me looks fantastic; that is, until the print is placed 
right next to a Pieziography print where if you look hard you can see 
a difference.

That's my two cents worth anyway.