I believe Epson decided the problem was related to certain environmental conditions and paper chemistry. If I recall, they made a reformulated paper but I am unaware of how it fared. You'll see color shift in even lab processed color photos.

Epson has a good reputation for photo printers (inkjet) but the reality of an archival inkjet printer is probably not there yet.

Price not withstanding, dye sub has unbelievable quality. The Olympus dye subs have indistinguishable output from the $5000 Kodak dye sub machines. I've not looked at the Sony printers (Memory stick). I suggest you send an image file to owners of each brand... HP, Epson and if you're interested I'll print out the dye sub print. You can then decide for yourself. There's almost no way to describe the difference except to use the word "continuity" or smoothness.

If price is an issue (not just the purchase price but the consumables as well - about the cheapest you can make an 8x10 dye sub print is $1.82), inkjets work well and most people feel Epson is better than HP for photo work. A real advantage to the inkjets is the availability of consumables.

Just having the option of an 8x10 (A4) dye sub now at $729 (near the cost of an empeg tuner on e-bay) is remarkable. I think Epson's current model is the 890 at $289.