Nope it doesn't (and don't put alcohol in the unlined MSR fuel bottles - they don't like it) but it'll pretty much burn anything from white gas to car gas to kerosene to lamp oil to diesel, to BBQ lighter fluid.

They're kind of heavy (not my thing for solo backpacking) - We have an old one. I run it on kerosene for hunting spike camps. It has in the past digested white gas just fine (still my first choice), car unleaded (clogs up a bit more), and Diesel fuel (clogs up and smokes on startup a more). It broke once a long time ago and MSR "fixed it" (basically turned it into a new stove) for the princely sum of 15 dollars... It definately would be a good stove to melt a heck of a large lot of snow on.

One thing to note if you buy one, I usually still prime this one with alcohol. I carry a small alky in my pocket when hunting big game, and once i started doing that, and therefore had a bottle of methanol in camp, I figured out to prime this old guy with alcohol rather than drizzling a lot of kerosene into it an torching it off to prime it. The alcohol flares a lot less and produces a lot less smoke yet still heats it up just fine.

I carry the whisperlite or svea on winter backpacking trips because, well, I don't need the kerosene for other reasons and am fine with white gas, and this old xgk stays in the spike camp stuff in storage <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> - at least in my case this is also the old kind with the fixed fuel line - so the whisperlite packs a lot smaller - the new XGK's have a flexible fuel line like the whisperlite though.

Don't even think about saying the word simmer anywhere near one - nobody will hear you say it while it's running anyway <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> As long as you're fine with that, and the weight, it's a good choice.