York

C,
nice summary, neutral wording, well done (green).
I was thinking of other advantages and disadvantages.
rebreathers can be more bulky and hence restrict access to some sites, but Bret Hemphil (spelling?) on his modified KISS demonstrated that this does not need to be the case (he sidemounts a lot).

I was wondering if there could be further distinctions between units? OK, beware of unit-bashing (which I really don't want to encourage).

sideline: I'm interested to know who are the RBW members who use a CCR for cave diving, which CCR and why? I dive a Meg, lived in Florida for several years (now in exile in the UK) and enjoyed the advantage a rebreather has over conventional SCUBA. Downside: suddenly all systems appear rather small. My recommendation: If you want to dream about ever reaching the end of the line (instead of actually doing it), don't go rebreather :-)
The Meg is fairly streamlined (I like the tighter caves, was sidemounting a bit before), allows easy modification should I want one, and takes a beating without much damage.
/sideline

I just returned from a (long overdue) vacation in Florida, staying 4 weeks with Gregg Stanton (wakulla diving). He has a very different approach than what else I have seen out ther, and the tries to have every (major) CCR available for users to look at, compare and if desired test-dive in the pool. It does take the mystery out of a lot of units when you see and dive them side by side. Without, people tend to drool over whatever they think/were told/heard someone important say what the best/coolest/latest gismo is. I think when I bought mine I based my decision on similar aspects (guilty as charged), but after the comparison I think I would make the same decision again. I suppose that horse has been beaten enough?

Things learned:
- every system has unique advantages and disadvantages
- every system has problems sometimes
- the devil is, as usual in the detail
- the concepts of avoiding the devil are very different: from simplicity to computer-does-everything, and about every possibility in between
- OTS-CL still gives you best breathing results
- except for one unit, all the commercially available systems use some form of electronics (even if only for display) that was more or less designed over a decade ago and received little change since then - and, might I suggest, not because it is already perfect (IMHO)
- Training is as important to the usage as the system itself. There seem to be 50% commonalities between systems, and 50% uniqueness required in training. I hear more and more that training overall seems very poor, with lots of people receiving vertification without having the required knowledge (I am not bashing here as I did not mention any specific agencies, just repeating the "talk on the street")
- Open-water requirements for a rebreather are probably very much different than cave-requirements? (up for discussion) If the only type of diving was non-cave, I would probably make a different decision for rebreather puchase.

I'm sure there were more lessons learned, but I can't remember them at the moment, and lunch break is over

- Joerg