Digital BW, The Print

I've owned many Epson photo printers over the last 5-6 years  (1160,1270,
1280, 2200) but may be getting ready to jump ship. I'm poised to buy either
an R1800 or HP 8750 printer, but it's a tough choice. Now that it looks like
dye-based prints may have fixed the major achival issues, I may no longer be
willing to put up with the problems of pigments.

With Epson printers we bend of backwords to work around bronzing, gloss
differential, and low Dmax. The new HP dyes appear to have none of these
problems. With three densities of black ink, the HP 8750 seems likely to
print great B&W, and HP even specifically targets B&W applications while
Epson has removed black-only capability from the R800/1800.

I expect the R800/1800 to significantly improve printing glossies, but do we
have any hard facts on its matte capabilties? Rumors suggest it is not quite
as good on matte as the 2200, but I'd love to hear Roy or Paul, or a few
other of the gurus in this group, tell us something definitive. It seems
like the R800 has been out long enough that we should know by now.

Also, does anyone have experience with the currently available HP 8450,
which has some of the features of the 8750? How good is it on matte papers,
and what are the HP matte papers like?

I feel like the R1800 or 8750 will be great steps forward, but it's such a
hard choice.

Steve