Digital BW, The Print

I decided to throw my Canon IPF5000 into the mix.  It came out a
distant third for two reasons:

1) There is a bit of graininess which IS visible to the naked eye (you
have to look close, but it is definitely there.  Don't know yet
whether this is due to the nature of the Canon printer, or something
isn't right with my print head.  The latter is a definite possibility,
because I have seen some very odd looking numbers for the auto head
alignment.  Tech support assured me that it was OK, but now I am not
so sure, since I see an actual anomaly.

2) While the Canon prints are indeed "dead neutral" by measurement,
the monochrome photo mode apparently doesn't track to paper white.    

Example of L*a*b* values measured with Eye One Spectro:

Paper - Innova Cold Press (beautiful and fairly inexpensive paper, by
the way)

Innova Paper White - 97.4, -0.1, 2.4
Cone Neutral K7 print through QTR - 66.9, 0.6, 2.3
Canon print with 10, -2 setting - 70.1, 0.1, 0.4

Ignoring the difference in luminosity, which can easily be tweaked,
the main difference here is that by L* approximately 70 the NK7 print
tracks the paper white almost exactly (b* 2.4, slightly yellow), while
the Canon print is "technically" correct at b* of very close to 0
(0.4). The Canon print doesn't look right visually to me. Not sure if
I would call this a bug, but it is less than ideal in my opinion. One
way around it would be to pick a paper which has paper white of very
close to 0 on the b* axis.  I think I measured Museo or Museo Max as
fitting this criteria.

PS The Epson ABW mode also tracks to paper white the way the NK7
inkset does with QTR.

Comments?

--John