Digital BW, The Print

I want to do some large size b&w prints for a show I have coming up. I 
normally do most of my prints on an Epson 1270 with colorlife paper. I'm 
hoping to be able to upgrade to a 2200 or 4000 by the end of the year.

A local digital print shop has a HP Designjet 2000 and 3000 running HP 
dye inks and HP photo glossy 7mil stock. Their price is about 1/3 of 
what a local camera shop wants for output from a Epson 9600 (which is 
almost 1/2 the price of a local photolab). The print shop doesn't know 
much about their HP, but they are easy to work with and would do 
whatever it took to get me a good print. I do a fair amount of B&W 
document printing with them. I may end up helping them to do the 
print/prints myself.

The question comes down to, How good are prints from the HP 2000/3000 
printers? I saw on an old Wilhelm report it listed HP 2500/3500 dye 
output on HP high gloss as only having a life of 6 years. Is this true 
of black only prints? How are the prints using HP UV pigmented inks? 
They are willing to get the archival inks for me, but I would hate to 
have them do that, if this equipment wont make good prints.

What are your thoughts on the HP 2000/3000, or should I just go ahead 
and get far fewer prints from the 9600.

Thanks,
-- 

Rob Coomer
Cave and Nature Photography
http://www.robertcoomer.com/sig.html

Editor, Electric Caver
Greater Cincinnati Grotto
http://www.gcgcavers.com
DUG, NSS 47765