Digital BW, The Print

I was following a discussion here, months ago, about how to get the
best B&W prints from the Epson 2100/2200 using the stock ink set.

At the time, there weren't any great solutions, as least not any that
didn't involve spending hundrdes of $$ on aftermarket RIPs. The
Epson RIP (still not free) looked promising, but results were
as yet inconclusive.

Anyhow, I'm wondering, has anything changed ?  Has a silver bullet
been found ?

Thanks, John

P.S.  Here is a writeup I did for a newbie in comp.periphs.printers
of my take on the situation with regards to B&W on the 2200:

It's kinda a big lie that B&W looks great on the 2100/2200.  The
problem is
that if you use "color" mode, where it prints B&W using all 7 inks,
then
you get an effect called metamerism - basically, the print looks
different
in tint under different light sources.  For example, when I use the
Epson
Enhanced Matte paper with the profile and "no clor adjustment", the
print
looks fairly decent (maybe a little brownish) at night under
incandescent
light; but the next morning, it looks kinda a gun-metal blue under sun
light from my windows.  Most people find this unacceptable.  There is
a
way around this, called "black only" printing; you simply check the
checkbox marked "black" (as opposed to "color") and ignore the warning
that it's suitable only for low-quality text printing, and manually
increase the resolution back up to 1440 or 2880.  And this looks
pretty
darn good - it's what I normally use.  However, since it uses only the
black ink (it doesn't even use the "light black"), the dots are a
little
coarser, and this can be noticed in highlight areas (that are a shade
of grey very close to white).  Also, it doesn't allow you to tint your
prints.  But it's not a bad solution.  The best solution appears to be
after-market RIP print drivers, but they are a significant additional
expense.  The one from ColorByte seems to be the best, but it's $500.
And Epson has a new "Pro" RIP for the 2200, which supposedly is pretty
good too, and only $200; but, since they claim this printer does
great B&W printing straight out of the box, I frankly think they ought
to give it away (I don't normally illegally copy software, but I
WOULD do it with Epson's RIP ...)  These RIP's apparently use all the 
inks except yellow, which evidently is the one that causes this
metamerism.   The last solution is after-market quad- or hex-tone
ink sets from people like MIS; but those don't exist for the 2200 yet,
and you're probably better off with a 1280 for this.