I agree with all of this 100%. Off the shelf machines have corners cut to build to a price. Self builds will often have this too, but you know which corners you cut and you can make the trade offs necessary to get a reliable machine.

I'm not saying there's no skill involved, but if you know what you're doing and do your homework properly a home build will always trump an OTS for the same price. If you can't build a machine for the price of the OTS, there's a reason for that.

it is undeniably the case that future generations will find it harder to look though Grandpa's JPGs than we currently do to explorer Grandpa's slides.

Don't forget though, poorly stored and neglected slides have their own problems with fungus etc.

My day job is long term digital preservation software, and I can assure you, what we see as amateur photographers is just the tip of one hell of an iceberg! The longer I work in this field, the less happy I am with my digital photo storage, and the more I lean towards my wifes approach of "pick the ones you'd cry if you lost, have them printed and put them in an album"

Archival grade paper in a decent album is still your best shot at having them easily viewable in 10+ years time.

beautifully executed mockup shots, we all know the myriad reasons why it will never happen but nothing to stop us dreaming eh?

Personally I'd go for a K2 rather than a Spotmatic, but hey, it's your fantasy!

How long would it take to pick your jaw up off the floor if the K-3 was unveiled and it was a K-2 digital update? (yes, I know it's impossible, so is faster than light travel, it doesn't stop me dreaming!)

the people of Dubrovnik like in body image stabilisation?

In my case it deppends on the computer and how lazy I'm feeling.

if my eeePc then I use the built in card reader.

If my Laptop I use the built in reader, unless I'm also using an external hard drive because for some reason my old lappy wont do ESATA and SD at the same time.

If a machine which doesn't have a built in reader, I use the camera with a USB cable...... well actually if I'm honest I spend 10 minutes cursing and swearing that I used to have a nice fast SDHC card reader and where the **** is it, then I find a cable and use the camera.

I do find readers are generally faster than the camera, and if downloading several cards it's less hassle to not have to keep swapping cards in the camera just because the card reader doesn't have a door on it. Plus (and this isn't a major consideration given the quality of the kit but still..) it seems sensible to minimise wear and tear on the expensive camera in favour of a cheap card reader.

see, all friends really

As far as I know you are correct, there's no specific warrenty. If it seized at 10,000 you might have a claim under fitness of goods for a given purpose, but I'm no expert on such things.

It's a statistical indicator like the mean time between failures on a hard drive, it guarantees nothing.

this discussion is in danger of decending into an argument, and no one in history has ever won an argument on the internet.

We have all put forth our points, I respectfully suggest that anyone who wishes to now has the necessary information to make up their own minds and we should end it before someone says something they'll regret.

as far as I'm aware, all the Pentax DSLRs are rated to 100,000 actuations. How that compares to other marques, I'm not sure.

I said nothing of the kind, I said that if you format the card in the camera you intend to use it in then (barring technical failure which is very rare with high quality cards and cameras) you will not experience any problems, and can therefore free your mind of card related considerations and get on with taking photographs.

Deppending on exact card/camera combinations, my route may or may not be the only route to trouble free shooting BUT and this is my critical point, no one has ever run into trouble by formatting their cards every time.

Personally, I'd rather stick to a technique which is known to work on all camera/card combinations rather than having a niggling concern in the back of my mind about unexpected and unnececary card problems.

You are of course free to do as you wish with your own equipment and I have no doubt that we will both continue to have no trouble with our own chosen workflows.