Digital BW, The Print

Happy New Year to all

I have enjoyed reading the great information posted in this group 
for about 2 weeks now. It seems that there are quite a few of you 
that are very satisfied with your success using inkjet printers for 
B&W. I wish I had stumbled across this source sooner. I am still 
absorbing this information and trying to establish my own workflow. 
I get B&W that my non-photographer friends think are nice, but they 
aren't meeting my desires yet.  Almost every day, I see something 
new and give it a try. HOwever, I am still all over the map when it 
prints. 

I have noticed that there are 3 predominant printers discussed in 
this group, Epson C82/84/86, 1270/1280/1290 and 2100/2200. There 
also seem to be two primary sources of software utilized, QTR and 
Roark's Curves with Epson drivers. 

Using any one of those setups, there are still a huge number of 
variables that can cost a fortune in paper and ink to get to a 
beautiful print. Given that there are many "newbie's" like myself 
reading this group; I believe it would be worthy to have those of 
you who are comfortable with your setup and workflow to post a 
description of it for us to compare to or perhaps switch to. A 
checklist of sorts for getting to excellent prints with a little 
less pain. Do you "old timers" of the group agree? 

If so, I would love to see and compare such information as: 
Platform: Win, Mac, Linux
Software used: Photoshop, etc.
Printing software: RIP, native application driver, etc
Printer: model and whether dedicated to B&W exclusively or not
Ink sets: MIS, Epson, etc
Workflow or link to a great starting point for creating one. Also, 
source of information to understand just what is going on when you 
tweak all those sliders in QTR or the Epson advanced drivers.

Here's what I have to work with currently: Windows XP Pro, Photoshop 
CS, Epson 2200 and C86(new, planning to try out the MIS EZ system 
after they open back up from the holidays), assorted papers, mostly 
Epson and Ilford. Your recommendations welcome. Please be as 
detailed as possible.

If you don't want to post to group, offline emails are welcome. 

Thanks to all the in this group for your contributions and may you 
have a wonderful New Year.

Bill