absolutely hear you on the bb side of things, that is my experience as well. For the various reasons I've already mentioned, I'm still leaning to sticking with good quality cup and cone hubs, the reasonable price meaning I would buy other bike, camping stuff, or put into a trip--that said, I could change my mind at some point. What has been neat about this discussion is learning more about cartridge hubs, I may end up at some point learning how to work on them, but like with everything, if the cost of specialized tools is too much, who knows, and I am more or less competent with cones and cup.
I certainly am more open to the cartridge concept now and will have to judge the various cost/quality angles when I get to the point of having to make a decision.

hey, here's a throwback--remember the old trick of putting pipe cleaners around the bottom of a headset or whatever to help reduce dirt and such coming into direct contact of the hub or headset? I still have some pipecleaners in my tool box mish mash and put one on the lower section of my mtn bike headset after having it apart and the lower plastic seal got damaged (I had to replace the star nut in the fork a few years ago). I have a front fender on this bike but figured why not, it'll help some stuff from getting in, and I remembered I had the pipe cleaners in a bag at the bottom of my junk.