To be fair to the iPF printers, a couple of things need to be pointed out:
1) Scott Martin has made B&W prints on Epson, HP and Canon and states when he shows the prints to photographers they usually choose the Canon print as the best.
2) The support is much improved from early on and not a significant issue now in my opinion. The documentation could be better, but the information on the Wiki mostly makes this more of an academic point.
3) While the iPF printheads are very expensive, the one year warranty and relatively few reported failures (most covered under warranty) mitigate this concern to some extent. Also, when one uses the "expected printhead life" from Canon the cost of the printhead compared to ink cost is not that unreasonable. So far, we haven't seen a rash of printhead failures to contradict Canon's printhead life data.
4) As with the HP, the iPF printheads are easily replaced by the user.
--John