Thanks for the insight. I've had my share of KW/Icom/Yaesu/Alinco/Azden/KDK etc. thru the years. Moving to my retirement spot and while the Moto stuff shines in the city with lots of intermod, I am thinking the improved receiver might be nice for some simplex work...the higher power transmitter, ditto. As well at this point, I can afford a Moto, so why not. I kinda want to try my hand at programming...
I kind of got hooked on the commercial stuff, to the point I've sold all my amateur only radios.
While the points about lack of VFO, scan limitations, etc. are all valid, for the way I use a radio on the amateur service, none of this was a drawback.
I've found over the years that I usually stick to a single 2 meter simple frequency for friend/family use. Throw in 146.52 for giggles and maybe another freq.
Add in a few of the local repeaters and I'm happy with most of it.
For my CDM-750 base I have 146.415, our "family" channel. I put in 146.430 as a secondary. 146.52 for calling (rarely used) and the one local repeater that hops over the hill to where some of my family lives.
Didn't have a need for anything else.
Really nice thing about commercial radios is that the "hang up box" function can be useful for a base radio you leave on all the time. The 146.415 "family" channel we use is set up with a PL tone on the base receiver. That way I rarely hear anything else. Taking the mic off hook reverts it back to carrier squelch on the RX side. Keeps extraneous noise down.
For the mobiles, I went with the CDM-1250 and CDM-1550 to get the additional channels. It doesn't take much room to put in all the standard simplex channels using standard steps (listed in the ARRL repeater book), although it's true that not all amateurs honor these standard steps.
That left lots of room for repeaters. I'm not big into using repeaters, so I just put in a lot of the higher level systems for emergency use.
Plus, since I "do radio" for a living, it's entirely legal for me to put my work Part 90 frequencies in there.
Standard amateur radios with VFO's are useful, but don't discount these newer commercial radios