Al, Mike. Yeah, I have already done the OS update and ordered a 1G ram expansion. I can't explain their rationalization for the the organs but since I had a Nord C1 which covers all the organ variations I'm likely to use, I wasn't too concerned. Perhaps I should have been. From what I've heard so far, I would describe most of the bread-and-butter sounds as good to very good and synth sounds as outstanding. If I were going for the very best acoustic and bread-and-butter sounds, I would probably look elsewhere. That said, the board truly IS feature rich, with enormous sound potential but leans more towards a production workstation than a performance synth (in my opinion). I think the price represents the on-board sampling/sequencing/recording capabilities. You would need to carefully set up this board and know it thoroughly if you intended to use it as a gig (performance) board.

I had a tiny little grey GE mouse that I had used with a laptop which works well with this board but being so used to Korgs, I wouldn't mind having that backed up with a touch screen (yeah, I know there are two camps on that). Perfect for me.......TouchScreen backed up by 'knobs and buttons' all with 'mouse' capability.

The main reasons I got this board?

1. Currently, no Roland sounds except for the SonicCell.

2. I wanted to try some more modern, experimental music and wanted a good source of easy to retrieve, modern sounds coupled with a reasonably capable, easy to use, sampler.

3. I liked the overall 'sound' of the board, much like I always liked the sound of the old original Triton (which I still have and use).

4. I got sucked in by that (french) demo that you posted .

5. I was bored (aka the 'Donny' syndrome).

Oh well, back to the woodshed. This thing is complex. Looking for a tutorial DVD if you know of one. Wish I had Rikki's resolve, patience, curiosity, etc., at digging into the bowels of these things.

chas