I had the chance a couple years ago to pick up a very extensive R8 system at wholesale price (the store had it ready to wholesale to KEH and sold it to me for $200 over their quote). I kept it for a year and a half in anticipation of the DMR. What I found was that as good as it was I just couldn't handle the weight of it all. My wife had a Canon Rebel with a few lenses and regardless of optical and build issues (and frankly those Canon primes are darn good and those "plasticky" lenses have never failed), to me a camera is useless if it's sitting at home because I can't carry it. I had to give up my trusty Pentax Spotmatics, which were great optically and just the right weight, because I couldn't get a diopter into the finder and still see it with my glasses (I need both). Eventually I sold all the R outfit and have been using the M for almost everything. I like the Canon 20D but it is, to me, bigger and heavier than I want as are the lenses (bigger, maybe not heavier). So I would really like to stay with the M, which is ideal for my use. I really don't have a problem staying with film if the M8 doesn't suit me, the problem is only that I shoot color slides and the infrastructure for that is getting slimmer. I'm not going to stress out over it, if the M8 pleases me I may get one eventually. If not, well, there are other options and may very well be more on the horizon we don't know about yet.
And in addition I get the feeling that a lot of these "issues" surrounding the M8 are the result of misinformation, mis-translation, and lack of specific clarification from Leica.
