cat-smokey, interesting thread. But there's other factors to take into account : The fact that XP Deus shows up a lot on the list, could simply be that a lot of hard-core relic guys have those, for awesome east coast site hunting. Thus, go figure, if you swing it enough over prime ground, and dig enough beeps, they'll of course eventually have chart-topper show & tells. But I'll bet that if you flooded those same fields with Ace 250's, a lot of those same targets would probably have been found. Because it might just be a function of "location location location".
When I attended the GNRS, I noticed very few Whites, Fishers, or Garrets. There was predominantly Minelabs (of various shades/stripes) and the XP Deus. And when/if you DID bump into someone swinging an MXT or Ace or whatever, they tended to be more in the beginner caliber. Most of the hardcore guys you'd talk to (who had scores of LCs and CW finds in their home collections) tended to be swinging the Minelabs and Deus.
Thus it could just be a question of demographics. If someone is more advanced/experienced, and if that caliber hunter tends to use only 1 of 4 or 5 different types of machines, then go figure: They'll show up on the banner list a lot. So it could just be a reflection of A) the user, and B) the sites. And not the machine itself so much.
