Dan - Clearly, I made some assumptions in my last post without even realizing I'd done so. The entire premise of my "Goodbye Kubota, Hello PowerTrac" and, subsequently, "Goodbye Kubota, Hello EarthForce" threads was based upon the knowledge and admission that I had been close-minded enough that it had prevented me from having a piece of equipment that would suit my needs far better because I hadn't really even looked.
Nobody but you can decide if you are or aren't open-minded, or even if you care whether you are or aren't. And I would never be so presumptuous as to think you should care whether I think you are or not. I certainly don't care whether you think I am. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif But I do care very much what I think of myself. It's called self-examination, not pride. I want to know I'm not stuck in a rut, not prejudiced for illogical reasons or no reason at all, not ignoring potential solutions because they aren't the way I've always done things or the way others do things.
As to switching sides, and advocating what I've got, what other choices are there? I'd be pretty dumb to have what I have because I don't like it, wouldn't I? Personally, if someone advocates A to me, and has only ever had A, I tend to put less credence in his endorsement than if he's owned A, B, and C, and wants to tell me how great C is. He's now in a position to know. Perhaps I also incorrectly assumed that everybody else views things from this perspective. (I also think this is embarking on a whole new discussion of what it means to be open-minded, too, but that's another story altogether.)
I've always considered myself pretty good at "thinking outside the box", as my engineer friend put it. So, I very much surprised myself by the degree to which I wasn't, in this case. I'm sorry if you took offense - my intent, as MarkV said, was to expose and educate, and to illustrate by my own example that we sometimes aren't as open-minded as we think we are. And that prevents us from learning.