As I said, James... if you guys were as willing to point out the caveats and gotchas of open keyboards as you are to emphasize its' good points, I wouldn't be posting at all. You criticize me for focusing only on the negative, but don't accept that exact same criticism for only focusing on the positive. Talk about a head in the sand!

There has to be SOME balance to all this... You don't see this forum simply accepting ANYONE'S unbridled enthusiasm for any arranger whatsoever without some counter opinion, reality checks and good old fashioned plain open criticism. I don't see you leaping to the defense of someone who might be as one sided in his admiration for a specific closed arranger. But you want that for the MS...

Well, sorry, old chum, but it ain't gonna happen!

Just as Yamaha people can point out problems with Ketron's, Roland's or Korg's (and vice versa), those of us with closed arrangers can point out potential pitfalls with open arrangers, and open keyboards in general. The story is NOWHERE near as one-sided as most of the pro-open posters make out...

Let's simply take your example of Dom's willingness to change the OS to suit you. Where was Dom's willingness to change things when it has been pointed out the shortcomings of his own arranger software? Where are the On Bass chords after six YEARS of development..? Dom conveniently abrogates HIS responsibility by discontinuing any further support for a TRULY integrated arranger solution in favor of third party players that don't integrate well with the keyboard (not as well as closed ones do, at least!). There are several BIG disadvantages of the style player software's over conventional closed arrangers on an operational level (going from one style to another without stopping, for instance). Where was Dom's legendary responsiveness then? He actually WROTE his own style player (it is still included to play MS styles) and never finished it...

You see, by only posting the good and none of the bad, you force SOMEBODY to post about the other side of the coin. In lieu of someone else, guess that's me... If that's a God complex, you have a very low opinion of a deity

I just call it 'keeping it real'...