I will also agree Deere is not made by Hitachi, they are in a partnership of equipment design. The Deere machine has the better engine in my opinion. I have always been a fan of the Deere engines especially the 6.8, its a rock solid engine and the sound is like no other excavator. I believe they have upped the ante on excavators when it comes to reliability, speed, precision, visibility and overall quality of the machine. Yeah I have my gripes about the cab being a little noisy and having a cheap radio, but realistically if thats all a guy can find wrong with a machine... thats a good thing isn't it?
The speed of the D's are impressive, I have got to play with a couple of different models now and they are faster than the C models, and definately faster than Cat. Relibility wise, I have talked to a few owners of the 200D,240D,279D and a 450D and they have nothing but good things to say about them. They have minimal downtime, better on fuel than the previous models and the production is on the up and up. I also found with the new smaller joysticks it's easier to do finesse work. I never liked those long slim things Deere has been using for the last 20 years, I always tend to grab them down towards the boot instead of the tops, but these new ones, they have a nice feel to them, their shorter, fatter and something about the rubber doesn't make your hands sweat after a day of sitting in it. And that brings me to my gripe about adjustability.. the forward and back movement is ok in them, definately improved over the C series. But there is still no up and down adjustment to them. Most guys like their joysticks down low from their body, I like them up high and close to you. I like to have my hands up high and closer to my body, I tend to cross my legs a lot when im digging to get comfortable and with them down low my hands hit my legs, also during normal operation when im just sitting ahead I rest my feet on the pedals a lot... my hands once again touch my legs. And I find you still can't move the seat far enough back from the pedals on the new machines so tracking backwards is difficult for me.
Today I went to Ritchie Brothers, pics will be in another thread. But I always jump on the different excavators that I don't normally get to run. Today I repeated a jump in an old 790D LC, they have always been my favourite along with the 892 and 992 D series machines... heck basically all the old 90D series machines were awesome. The cabs were well thought out, the pedals were a nice distance away, even the joysticks were in the right spot.... and I don't know about you but I LOVED the old hand throttle compared to the little dial nowadays.
Deere does have a great machine with the new D series, but I have my issues with it. But I have never jumped in a machine I liked enough that I didn't want to change something in it.
Heres a pic I took especially for ZAXIS a few weeks back. Couldn't start a new thread for one lonely pic 