I do not ignore speed and ease, I just get the same from an ICE which show the real thing.

If that's convenient, of course. What I've most enjoyed about using my simulator is that I can be at the home office, waiting at the airport, on the plane, at the hotel, or at the client site without having to haul around an extra piece of hardware. Granted, it's not a huge piece of hardware but it's one more thing to move around.

Another problem (for some of us) is that those of us under Linux are kind of toast. I'm not sure if there's any ICE that directly supports Linux and the recent trend of laptops not having serial ports is just making matters worse.

My main beef with simulators are the many times you hear "It works in the simulator it's not my fault"

True, that's bad. I think that's more of a misuse or misunderstanding of how to use a simulator than a negative aspect of simulators themselves. They are useful for the purpose they serve, but you should not expect the program you simulated will behave identical on real hardware--although it often will.

Ps: you do get some benefit from simulated sex :-)

I'm not even sure how to interpret that one, so I think I'll leave it alone. :)

Regards,
Craig Steiner