"I have owned an Epson 4000 with Imageprint v6 for about 1.5 years. In some ways, it is a great printer. But after spending countless hours and over $1000 just on profiling the 4000, I am still not able to get as satisfactory a match as I was able to get between my monitor and my previous printer, the Epson 2200. I have grown very frustrated and want to make a change."
I doubt it's the printer's fault that your prints aren't matching your monitor - it's more likely you have a color-manaagement problem, perhaps something about soft proofing, that a new printer isn't going to fix.
I used a 4000 for two years, but switched to an iPF5000 for a boost in print quality - & especially to avoid the 4000's repeated nozzle clogs, which seemed to increase as the printer got a lot of mileage on it. No problems at all, matching the screen of the LaCie CRT that I was using then with print output. But I sold the 4000 when I could still get some $ out of it & bought an iPF5000. I had trouble with the learning curve on this printer, but did find that it made superior prints in 2 respects: the 4000 inkset still allowed some noticeable metamerism; & gamut was wider with the Canon. Overall, the Canon prints on HPR tended to have more vitality & depth. I'd no longer feel right about selling a 4000 print - they're just reference prints & give-aways - because I can consistenly come up with a more satisfying version on the Canon printer.
After a reasonable amount of testing (in conjunction with a friendly neighborhood giclee printer), we concluded that the current Canon, HP, & Epson printers all make top-notch prints. Other considerations like price, size, & need to switch black inks probably matter as much or even more than differences in their image output.
You should expect a gain in image quality if you replace your 4000 with a current Epson, Canon, or HP. All have slightly better inksets than the 4000. But I wouldn't expect the result to be that your prints will be a better match to your monitor. The good ol' 4000 should do that.
Also be aware, if you buy an iPF5000 & use an Intel Mac, that Canon never bothered to write universal binary software that would allow you to use their PS plug-in for direct 16-bit printing. To use this feature, you have to run CS3 in Rosetta, or else switch back for printing fron CS3 to CS2. And Canon has had some customer service & warranty problems, as you'll see on the Wiki. If you can swallow all this, an iPF5000 for $900 sounds like a pretty good deal.
Kirk
www.dryreading.com/kirkthompson