Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

I've been reading the archives of this list for long time, but joined 
the list as I have a bad problem,

I own a HP 7660 and it really prints stunning B&W photos. I bought it 
after my third epson clogged badly ( just after warraty period) and I 
got sick of spending ink cartridges just to run cleaning cycles. With HP 
there has not been these kind of problems.

Now anyway I need to print lots of B&W prints. I was very happy with BO 
printing with epson C82, but of course the black nozzels are clogged and 
the banding in the prints are too visible. I could recover some nozzels 
with windex-type ammonia based window cleaner, but not all. Now all the 
carts are almost empty because of running several cleaning cycles. The 
printing costs using epson are significantly lower than HPs but I 
hesitate to buy a new epson, because of my really bad experiences with 
head clogging and spending lots of ink just to clean the nozzels. With 
that money I can buy hp no 59 carts.
Still printing lots of prints with HP costs too much for me and I'm not 
very happy with premium plus pro satin-matt, to me it remainds me of a 
plastic table cloth, only the smell of PVC is missing :-) Glossy is 
quite ok, but in the good old days I printed with C82 on  different 
watercolour papers and liked the prints. BTW I printed with HP on 
Somerset velvet and the result was not too bad. Only the longevity 
concerns. Any ideas if spraying such a print could help increasing the 
longevity.

The best solution would be to get the nozzles of C82 working, but I'm 
too pessimistic. Any really good cleaning tips would be very much 
appreciated.

I didn't calculate how many prints I could print with and epson black 
cart, but with HP the ink level shows 0% after 11 prints ( the prints 
were quite dark) but I counted that I printed 10 more prints, before the 
cart ran out of ink.

Here in Finland C84 costs 145 euros.

best regards

-matti