I know it's an old post, but it's an illustration of how different conditions and preferences can be. I'm on a mountainside in the New River Valley, and we have rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. And the only flat spaces were created by bulldozers and the like.
I hate the idea of not having the ROPS. Gives me something to hang onto in the steep rocky stuff out in the woods, keeps most of the low-hanging branches from raking my glasses off of my face again, and has kept several falling branches from bonking me on my head.
I generally trim off branches that frequently hang up on the ROPS, but this property has hundreds of trees and probably thousands of saplings and shrubberies. It's often steep and ridiculously rough.
And on the other hand, MossRoad has sandy loam. Different universes. The PT425 does pretty well in a lot of them.
