I was alway a Canon user. ... I have tried Nikon a few times - good glass but could never get their ergonomics - seem so backwards to operate - to me.
This made me laugh - because exactly the opposite to my experience. I just can't 'bond' with the Canons. They seem great, but I don't get them. Strangely, I don't have this much with other camera brands - even ancient ones. Even the Olympus 'shutter speed on the lens mount' doesn't bother me.
It's interesting to me that for some reason, this ergonomic preference carried over from Nikon manual focus (FE generation) to digital SLR (and the F100 on which the digital are essentially all based). And conversely, I can't stand the Nikon point and shoots, but the Canon P&S are fine (when I can put up with the shutter lag for portability trade-off).
Personally, I tend to think that ergonomically Nikon just nailed it with the F100 - but it's just a preference. That said, I think Nikon is pretty bad at electronic configurations and menus - not terrible, but pretty bad.
I could echo others' comments on reliability and say that I've had very, very few problems with my Nikons, but - even though I've had a lot of GAS - my sample size is too small.
But as a general comment, I think part of the issue is the generation. The EOS amateur build cameras were both early autofocus, and well into the period of transition to 'cheaper' build cameras - not because they were cheap, but because manufacturers were well into learning that building amateur-level cameras that would last a generation didn't make sense when the technology was changing so fast. I don't know, but I don't have the impression that the early Nikon autofocus (amateur level) have held up well either. (And since you can pick up F100s for a couple hundred, and FE/FM2s for less, I don't know why anyone would bother).
