Originally Posted by shoerhino
Great Summary DocRay!
I second the the kurt kenetic. Had one that I used for a year and of the normal trainers, I really liked it. I've since purchased an I-Magic, which is AWESOME. Not the best training tool but holds my interest much better.
Not only that, but how else can you take a $3,000 carbon fiber on an off-road race and survive to tell the tale.
Keep in mind that i-magic requires a reasonably fast computer to function properly. I have a 2 year old pentium III mobile tablet computer and it sometimes has a hard time running properly. I can get it to work well if I set the video to minimum resolution and keep from running any other programs at the same time. A newer pentium IV or Centrino should work fine. Also, the graphics are worse than flight simulator 98, but if you can get beyond the graphics, it's a great tool to keep you motivated. And you can race against other people around the world by downloading their stats from Swedish site:
http://imagic.e-cycling.se/index.php
Also, it provides very advanced analysis of cadence, energy output, heart rate, speed, and other data. And you can set environmental conditions such as wind speed. If you purchase the steering frame, which I did not, you can even explore the terrain yourself without having to stay on the designated track.
Good luck!