Go for the latest R240, it looks exactly like my R340. 
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/99634
Also SVP has a Continuous ink system for the epson R series, that I plan to get as soon as Im done with with regular inks.
http://svp.co.uk/products-solo.php?pid=1171 Hopefully they will be getting more in.
They’ve fixed any problems with the cd tray as far as I can see. The only difference between the 240 and 340 is that the 340 takes 6 inks instead of 4 like the 240. Obviously you save money by having to replace less inks.
The R240 does also a max 19ppm while the 340 does 15 ppm. Not surprising really as its more of a photo/dvd disc printer than an office printer in my case, and obviously its using more inks.
The resolutions are also the same.
I got some 5 by 7 premium photo paper a month ago as epson had just started producing this size and it came with buy 1 pack of 50 sheets get one free, I got it from pixmania.co.uk. The quality is very good.
Some might not like the basic software that it comes with for printing cd’s but its fine for me. I just edit my picture in photoshop, crop it, and then fit it to size in the epson program. Stupidly enough, when I got it, I didnt realise that in the Inner/Outer settings for where the printer was meant to stop printing onto the cd, I didnt realise that you had to measure the <<<<the hole in the centres diametre>>> even though it does say ‘diametre’ lol, and for the outer settings, to measure the width of the entire discs side to side’s, printable diametre. Doh. Got it working now of course. And of course you can save your settings for different printable disc inner/outters.
Another cool feature if you want to use this as a photo printer and not only for a4 printing and cd printing, is the expansion slots. You can even plug in a usb memory stick and use the display to choose colour saturation etc.
Well hope that helped. 
And what do you use a scanner for anyway?? I suppose you cant compare a 5mp digital camera to a amazing scanner, but whenever I back up my dvd’s I just use good lighting conditions and my digital camera to make a cover, it works well, alot better than downloading the cover.