I've been experimenting with stoves and cooksets recently. My experiences are personal (as always) but for what it's worth:

o I have had an MSR Dragonfly since 1998. I thought it was great for years, until I broke the pump and realized that some things probably shouldn't be made of plastic. Also, on my last tour in 2008 I had problems with it going out for no apparent reason while cooking. So my ardor cooled somewhat.

o I've been playing with the Trangia alcohol stoves recently. They are really very nice indeed. Quiet, simple, nothing to go wrong. The only downside is that they are slower to heat, and you have to carry more alcohol for the same heat output. But alcohol is readily available just about everywhere. One small niggle is that the latest Trangia burners I have been using seem to have issues with manufacturing quality control. You'd think there wouldn't be all that much to mess up here, but apparently there is: I noticed that some of the holes were blocked by some kind of white substance. I tried poking it in with a piece of wire but all that happened was that it would move around to a different hole. During burning, it causes the stove to sputter and burn unevenly (comparing the newer units side by side with my older Trangia, which doesn't have this problem). So I contacted Trangia, and they told me that these stoves have (and have always had) a cotton wicking material inside. On my older Trangia this has never been apparent, but on two newer burners I can see the white wick inside, it's obviously very close to the holes and even blocks them... this seems like a manufacturing problem to me, I don't mind there being wick inside, but it almost certainly shouldn't be blocking up the holes on top. Trangia didn't answer any more of my emails after that, so I guess I have cooled off somewhat toward them too now.

o I have tried the Trangia 27 UL/HA cookset, and while I like the overall design, the hard anodized surface is not very non-stick at all (it failed my scrambled eggs test dismally). Also, the windscreen means you pretty much have to use the pots that come with the kit - bigger pots won't fit in, and smaller ones might not rest properly on the three fold-out legs inside. And, you have to reach down inside the windscreen to adjust the simmer ring; and the simmer ring isn't very easy to use, really. So while this cookset seems very good in principle, I find it to be not all that flexible in practice. I want something that can handle different pots and pans, and with easier simmer capability, and real non-stick.

o I have also been trying out the Trangia Westwind stove stand, which is a very simple three-piece thing. Works well, but mysteriously it works much better when used upside down (i.e. with the stove on the ground and the stand inverted on top of it). I got much faster boil times this way, which seems a little weird, but it's simple and versatile.

o I've also tried the Clikstand trangia stove stand. It works well too, pretty much same concept as the Westwind. Either way, you really need a surrounding windscreen. The Clikstand is not quite as flexible as the Westwind, since it has its own little ledges for resting the windscreen on, and if you have a larger pot then you can't really use those.

o Evernew non-stick pots: These are very lightweight, but that's about the only upside as far as I can see. The non-stick surface really doesn't stop stuff from sticking (failed the scrambled eggs test), and the measurement numbers that are stamped into the sides of the pots makes cleaning a bit harder, since food tends to stick there. Also, the handles are not good - they are covered with silicon sleeves to make them handleable when hot, but the problem is that when hot, the silicon becomes very slippery, sliding over the handles and making them squirrely and kind of scary to hold. Nothing like holding a pot of boiling water and feeling the thing squirming around like an alive thing. And finally, the titanium pots are very thin, and Ti doesn't conduct heat very well, so these two factors combine to make for "hot spots" which tend to scald your food if you're not careful. All that being said, if all you want is light weight and to boil water, then these are a great option.

o I've also been trying the Evernew DX stove, version I have which comes with a small 500ml cup (everything fits neatly inside the cup, which is very neat). The DX stove is an interesting concept, very compact, and their Ti burner is like the Trangia, but with two rows of holes. It burns much faster and hotter than Trangia, so if you're looking for fast boil times, then this is your puppy. But unlike Trangia, the burner has no screwtop or simmer ring, so you can't easily simmer or even turn it off (apparently you're supposed to just measure out in advance the amount of fuel you want to use, then burn off any remainder when you're done, which seems rather wasteful and non-flexible to me). Actually you can simmer with this burner simply by putting the pot directly on top of the burner, so that it covers the top row of holes but not the second. This simmers quite well, but you can't do this if you started off with the burner inside the DX stand - it all gets way too hot to handle. So there's a problem with the transition from "heat everything up quickly to boil" to "ok, now simmer" - you can pretty much do either one or the other, unless you bring along a pair of heavy duty hot surface handling gloves (I've tried using these, but even they will scorch - the stove gets red hot). But again, if your focus is mainly light weight and boiling water, then this is a fantastic option. Oh, and the DX stove can also burn wood (very small bits, but it can do it) or those little fuel tablets.

o In my quest for the perfect cookset, I decided that what I really wanted was aluminum (since it conducts heat very well and avoids hot spots) and a "real" non-stick surface, since I hate having food stick and then having to scrub off the burnt and stubborn gunge. So eventually I settled on the Texsport Black Ice The Scouter Hard Anodized Cook Set (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P9F1EQ/). This has a non-stick surface made of Quantanium, which I had never heard of before but apparently is much harder wearing than ordinary teflon. I don't know about the hard-wearing aspect yet, but so far this cookset is a winner - it passed my scrambled eggs and fried eggs test with flying colors, the food just floated on the surface, and so was dead easy to clean. It's not the lightest cookset out there, but it works. The handles are fold-out, so I don't have to mess with those little fiddly clamp-on grabbers. This is my favorite cookset so far.

o New stove: I have been itching to try out the Primus Omnifuel for a long time, and so I finally got one of these. It's very similar in concept to the MSR Dragonfly, but it has a sturdier pump (mostly metal, though there is plastic in the housing, most of the bits that are stressed when pumping are metal). Also, it can work from either the pump (i.e. liquid gas which you pressurize yourself using the pump, like the MSR stoves), or canisters which have the screwtop. This is a very nice, flexible option, and so far I'm really liking this little stove. Again, not the lightest weight one out there, but so versatile and very rugged.

So currently, while I like the Trangia and Evernew alcohol stoves, I think my current favorite is the combination of the Primus Omnifuel and the Texsport Black Ice The Scouter cookset. If I was going ultralight and just wanted to be able to boil water, then I might just take the Evernew DX stove with 500ml Ti cup - very lightweight and small.

Neil