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Phil, I have only ever used the genuine Epson inks. As I indicated earlier, I produced a spreadsheet of the cost of my current printing £153 p.a. for about 70 near A3 prints per year buying genuine Epson cartridges from Amazon. I also costed the Lyson refillable Cartridges and CIS systems. This includes any initial outlay for the kit, bespoke colour profiles and subsequent ink. I calculated each year for 6 years. The break even point is dependent on the quantity you use and was about 4 years for me. Beyond the fours years the savings using CIS becomes significant. The problem is that you risk being left with a large quanitiy of ink you may not be able to use if the printer fails early. The swap between Matt Black and Glossy Black seem more painful for CIS than swapping Epson cartridges as well. I will certainly ensure that swapping is not required on any future printer I buy. If you have a newish printer and use significantly more ink p.a. than I do, it may be attractive and lower cost to use CIS.
Dave
Hi all,
thanks for the comments, i appreciate what your saying on cost dave, and one thing i will put first if i ever change the printer in the future is the size of the ink cartridges. i do tend to do a fair few prints, but have never counted how many. I am curious on the comment about the cartridges reseting themselves, can you elaborate on that?
many thanks
phil
Phil, even if you do not keep a count of the number of prints, you may have a record of the money you spend on ink. As I buy mine from Amazon, I just went into my Amazon Account and added up the cost for one year which came to £153. Also this tells you how many cartridges so you know the volume of ink used.
Dave
It does pay to shop aound for your inks, Premier Ink (see link below) are charging £8.99 each or £69.99 for a set of 8 (you can choose matte or photo black in the set). 
http://www.premier-ink.co.uk/ink-cartridges/epson/stylus-photo-r2880/-c-62_63_20...
With the life span of the pigment inks being far superior than dye base inks I can't see the need to move over to CIS.
I have a Epson R1900 with CIS but two colours are faded and have horizontal banding, maybe because I don't use it very often but I want to print out my photos now. I tried the self cleaner and tried to print solid colour to force out ink without success yet...If i have future problems I may just buy a new Epson A2 size with just Epson inks then at least I know the quality is high and reliable.
Fotospeed Chrystal Dye Inksets instead of pigment inks, Also it may be worth fitting ink bags to the printer to catch the waste ink when autoclean cicks in 
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