Those are some nice-looking tents, and great weight for a solo shelter.

Like you, I've seen both topics discussed a lot in various threads; what I was hoping to do here was a continuation of something Jimshaw suggested several months back: collect all of those pieces and parts of discussions in one thread, oriented to beginners (with the possibility that, at some point, the moderators might decide it was worthwhile to "pin" selected threads at the top of the beginner's section to perhaps cut down on the amount of re-hashing that gets done.)