One man's view
I was always pleased with my Epson Stylus Photo 750 but the prints do not have lasting quality. After three years on the mantlepiece they fade badly. That printer has been superseded a couple of times.
This is an ink problem, not the printer per se.
So I read the journals and the latest model - Epson Stylus Photo 950 was coming out tops. Epson have had the edge on HP in recent years and have addressed the problem of colour fade.
(I too had an HP 870 and was pleased with that until the Epson 750 came along...)
So I now have the 950 and am very pleased indeed. It still has a parallel output (for my network) as well as USB and the ink system is quite new. There are seven cartridges now! Two black and five colours. For the moment I'm taking Epson's word for the colour fastness. It does a couple of fancy things I've not tried yet; eg, printing directly onto a CD, printing on roll paper, printing right to the edge of the paper. It's quiet and quick, of course, but it is huge for an A4 printer.
Cost in UK on the Internet? £330 from Simply after a bit of a wait because of the delay caused by high demand for a brand new product.