Unsure of best DPI technology

Hi,
I've posted this here because we currently use a Phaser 7400DN. Generally quite happy with it. We're printing 8-up postcards, duplex on SRA3 then double-sided laminating and putting through a Caslon cutter.

We've started doing more 'photo' cards - i.e. wedding thank yous etc. and whilst 99% of the customers love the product, we get a couple of complaints (4 out of +400 custs buying this new product) that the cards aren't 'photo quality'.

At 600 x 1200dpi I know the resolution isn't great, but it's been good enough for 99% of custs. So I've got some samples of other lasers - I had hoped the 7500 (1200dpi) would show improvement (mainly because I wanted to stick with our Pagepack contract which works great for us) but the gain is minor. From the other manufacturers looked at the Oki C9650 seems the best even though it's 600x1200dpi. But the images seem sharpest and the half-toning seem smoothest.

But if I compare it to a cheapo inkjet (on gloss stock) the inkjet still wins for dpi hands down!

We're doing around 2000 x SRA3 prints per month onto 250-300gsm card (this is the heaviest I've found I can get away with using auto-duplex).

I've not seen samples from digital presses (toner-based or ink).

So, with a budget of (approx £5K / $7KUSD) for the hardware, and I need the pages to come in at around 8p / 8c for an SRA3 sheet, can anyone suggest an alternative technology to the lasers I've been looking at? The problem as I see it is that the really high quality devices are designed for 100K+ pages per month and we need just 2K. And the low-volume devices are all cheapo inkjets which require specialist (expensive) paper to get decent prints.

Can any point me in a direction for research please? I'm happy to research myself (been at it 3 hours today already), just need a little pointer.

Gavin