I was wondering how the inks and media handle water. My guess is that water would bleed out the inks and ruin the print but I'm curious if they sell coatings out there to protect say a fine-art rag canvas print, or a large photo print.

Also I was wondering how well the HP Vivera Ink system holds on vinyl (banner) material in terms of durability.

Thanks so much for your input. I'm curious what you mean when you say "Normal paper looks alright but still has some lines from printing and you need to make sure all your blacks are the same or you will see the shade difference in the image."

What are the "lines" and what do you mean by making sure the blacks are the same? The printer I'm looking at uses a 12-ink system and 4 of those inks are neutrals, black and various shades of gray.

What are you trying to print that you need to be waterproof?

Unfortunately, if you want your printer to remain archival, I don't think you can use waterproof inks and then go back to using archival inks on acid free media. Whenever I have wanted to print outdoor weather proof banners, I just send it out to somewhere like Kinkos. They do a fine job for less than it would cost me to do it myself.