Ok, this is going to be brief b/c I will probably be paged soon. If you check my posts (by clicking on the little circle next to my name) you will be able to read my GLOWING reviews of the Canon i9900 (it is a wide format printer). It only has one drawback so far and that it cannot do 12X12 borderless printing (currently no wide format printer that I am aware of can). However, there are many ways to get around that (just check my posts for solutions).
As for the Epson 4870 photo scanner, I purchased it because I wanted a photo scanner and I wanted one with digital ice and color correction software. Briefly, those softwares remove scratches/dust from old photos and color corrects. In my opinion this is DEFINITELY needed if you are going to be working with old pics. You can restore pics in photoshop (and there is an excellent book to teach you how) but it takes a LONG time, with the software the time is greatly reduced. Now the software is not perfect. You end up sometimes having to reposition the photo for the digital ice to work better. However, this scanner is the only scanner I have used where people (and I am talking about computer and photo techies) either asked me if it was a scanned pic or commented on the high quality. To boot you can connect it via firewire and BOY IS IT FAST!!!!!! If you have photoshop cs you can scan four pics at a time and then use the automatic crop and straighten function and it divides up the sheet of four pics into individual pics. WAY COOL and A HUGE TIME SAVER!!! My only complaint with the scanner is that I wished it was legal or at least 13X19 size. One cannot have it call.
Again, I hope this helps you out.