In article <56pk9p$lss@newstoo.ericsson.se>, Simon.Ogilvie@Guildford.ericsson.se says...
[....]
>In my opinion the Epson Pro printers are about the best you can get,
>although there is a new Canon printer about to be released that has
>a photo-realistic print cartridge that matches the Epson, and there
>is also a new type of printer marketed by Alps and Citizen for around
>the same cost as the ink-jets which is nearly dye-sub quality.

The Epson is available now and is reasonably good (better, I think,
in the "photo-realism" department than other inkjets [on the special
720 dpi Epson paper], with less "bleeding" than other inkjets, and
even better photo quality than the Alps), B U T (!!!!), the permanence
of the image is a non-existent quality (images fade rapidly in light).
The Alps prints are claimed to be much more fade resistent (I have not
yet started fade tests on these - lazy me!;-) For "photo-realism",
one can't yet equal dye subs with other technologies, as far as I know,
but the per-print costs are very high with this process, alas, and the
relatively inexpensive dye sub printers don't have the resolution of
the Epson and Alps, also alas....
For quick and cheap, reasonably OK prints, the Epson is hard to beat.
For somewhat more money, the Alps may offer better print permanance.
Hope This Helps