NEW BOBCATS ARE GREAT!!
Geoff, you ain't kidding about those new bobcats man!! We got the first of 5 new 863's we bought last month. Its great, we got the code start and the ac and all that, its great!! We have every attatchment melroe makes for them, plus some aftermarket ones. The only one we haven't got was the ice scraper, didn't see that it could do anything I can't do with a bucket.
I want to give you one suggestion before you buy a backhoe attatchment for your bobcat. I don't know if you've ever run them and I don't know how true this is, but I hear the new ones don't have as good visablility as the old ones do where you sit on a seperate seat up higher on the attatchment. From what I understand the newer models you sit in the bobcat cab, I can't see being able to se much of what your doing.
We use a Bobcat mini excavator a lot lately, especially after we bought the dumper attatchment for the bobcat loader. The excavator works great!! And with the loader it makes a great team!! I hate to sound like a bobcat commercial but I'm very happy with their product. I'm so glad the Air Forces is still buying them constently!! I have a couple pretty good pics on my web site of one of our old bobcats I got stuck in a creek last week at work. I seemed to have grew these huge nads after I put the loggering tracks on it, and decided I could make it though no problem!! You'll laugh hard if you see it!! Go check them out.
If you have any questions about the Bobcat products that your dealer can't answer or you don't want to ask him, let me know, we have an AWESOME Gov't sales rep I go through and he always responds quickly!! So just ask. I also have a bunch of hours on all the attatchments, so let me know if I could help with anything.
Good Luck with your new machines!!