i know you asked for that other guy, but for now looks like all you are getting is me! i can't say i disagree entirely with your review. to begin with i have never been as big of an advocate for the track jcbs. the bucket hitting the track does seem like a problem. but your review is not totally fair because the tak is a radial machine and the jcb i assume was vertical. i would definitely recommend the radial machine for tough use, but if your doing exclusively dozer type work i would probably recommend the tak for you. somehow, and unbelievably, the vertical boom is not quite perfect like i was expecting it to be, because when you are selling a one armed machine, its going to be highly scrutinized, so one would think getting it perfect would be priority one. as far as the side to side movement, its true that it is there and does seem to get worse with time (our machine has 1500 hours on it), but is it a problem? to some maybe, to me i just accept it as part of the pros and cons of having a one armed machine.
it is definitely true that if everyone grew up on a jcb and some new company came out with a standard skid steer everyone would laugh and never buy it.
for me it all comes down to being comfortable in the drivers seat, that is my main objective. i spend 1000 hours a year in the machine and get in and out 10s of 1000s of times; as long as everything else seems to work i am happy. sure the boom is not perfect, but it still seems to go up and down and dump without any problems. until the competition starts making quiet machines with roomy cabs and better ergonomics and such i am not very interested in them. the cats seem to be coming close but their cabs are not very roomy. our new bobcat pretty much sits in the shed all the time because it is too loud and hard to drive. although the visibility to the cutting edge is impressive on the bobcat. which leads me to my next point... when you have the jcb and the bobcat next to each other and compare them, the jcb is almost identical as far as the front window location and dimensions and the wiper motor location, but where the jcb "looses" out in cutting edge visibility is because the cab is 6 inches longer or so, so you sit back in the cab another 6 inches, which puts you that much further away from the cutting edge. so if one would move the seat ahead all the way i would imagine the visibility might improve. but i am not willing to sacrifice my lounging capabilities for cutting edge visibility.
as far as not being able to see any of the tires really, at first that bothered me, but after a few months i got used to it. because the machine is so different, it takes some getting used to.
as far as breaking up frost, i do a few acres of that every year on the cow yards. when the bucket is in vertical position lots of times the relief will activate on the tilt cylinder, prematurely in my opinion, generally i try to stop before the cylinder is fully extended and I'm still pushing that just seems like it might break something but a few times i have not been quick enough.
i find the 2 speed activation works great on my machine, much better smoother and nicer than the bobcat. I haven't done an official test yet, but I'm guessing the jcb uses less than half the fuel the bobcat does. partially because with the bobcat you have to be running full throttle for it to do anything and the jcb is usually running less than half throttle, adding even more to the quietness.