A new topic to chew on: most of the talk regarding Yamaha these days is about the Tyros, but as far as I can tell the 9000 Pro is still the top of the line Yamaha arranger, based on the following:

1. It's the highest priced portable Yamaha arranger.
2. It has not been discontinued despite the introduction of the Tyros.
3. It has more actual pro performance features than the Tyros (sampler, expansion board compatibility, 76 note keyboard, more outputs).

Yet Yamaha has not given it's support for the 9000 Pro as it has for the Tyros in areas such as:

1. OPT panels/voice editors - none exist for the 9000 Pro to date, yet the Tyros ships with them... obviously Yamaha's R&D is behind the Tyros and not the 9000 Pro.
2. Promotion - the Tyros has quite a lot of publicity behind it and even free goodies like screen savers etc. that the 9000 Pro does not.

So I expected Yamaha to discontinue the 9000 Pro by now (maybe we're on the brink of that happening). But Yamaha has stuck to it's position that the Tyros is not the successor to the 9000 Pro and obviously the 9000 Pro is still on the market. So is the 9000 Pro still the "flagship arranger" of the Yamaha line? I ask this because we know that some people who work for Yamaha read this forum, and for 9000 Pro owners the next question is whether Yamaha intends to contiue with OS upgrades for the 9000 Pro and/or will it release the same kind of OPT panel voice editors for it that it has for the Tyros? Will there be continued marketing of the 9000 Pro (all current material is very dated) or is something new in the works to replace it?