I may get flamed for this, but don't sweat the paper. Frame your photos, stand back 2 feet, and no one will know which brand or type of paper they were printed on.
Now if you are selling prints, that is a completely different story. Knowledgable print buyers expect status brands (Hahnemuhle, for example) fine-art papers. Also, people using dye printers are usually best off staying with their ink-makers recommended papers. Otherwise get what looks good to you.
There is something analogous to pixel peeping that goes on with the paper compulsives, those who put their eyeballs an inch from the surface, smell the stuff, hold it at odd angles under intense lights, and perform other strange antics that people looking at photographs don't normally do.
Sure there are differences. If you pay a nickel a sheet you're probably buying junk, but it is not necessary to spring $2+ for a single 8x10 sheet to get good stuff. The vast middle ground from about $0.20 to $1.00 per contains loads of fine papers in a variety of surfaces.
There are basically two kinds of surfaces, matte and glossy. Manufacturers divide glossy into degrees of shine and call them things like luster, semi-gloss, silk, etc, but all of them can reflect glare. Avoid any chance of glare (also called "specular reflection") by buying matte paper. The downside of matte is blacks are not quite so black as on the glossy types. A plus is you can sign your nake in pencil right on the print.
Most of us settle on 1 or two types and love it until another pretty face comes along. Keep in mind that for every paper you print on you'll want to have an accurate profile so your prints look like what you see on your calibrated monitor.
Everyone has their favorites. My current fav matte is Epson Premium presentation Paper -Matte. It's cheap at $0.20/sheet (8 1/2 x 11"), and produces vivid sharp images. My "good" paper is Ilford Gallerie Gold Fiber Silk (or whatever they call it these days). It is a warm toned paper, which I like, has a very subdued sheen, and yields extremely vivid prints. It is a very heavy weight paper, which seems to impress people who like to pick up and heft unframed prints.It does scratch easily though. Those sheets cost me about $1.00 in 8 1/2 x 11.
Having said that, there are probably ten other mattes, and ten other low-sheen gloss papers that I could use just as well as "my" two.
My advice: pick one matte and one glossy from the major paper vendors that are priced comfortably and readily available to you. Make sure the maker offers downloadable profiles for your printer, and stay with them untill your tastes change. Concentrate more on your photography then your paper choice.
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JerryG
My galleries at:
http://www.pbase.com/jerryg1 
