This brings back a funny memory. When I bought my house 10 years ago, I bought a "Wild Thing" form HD. As a new homeowner, I had received a 10 or 15% off coupon, and when I bought it, I signed up for their in house credit card and got another 10 or 15% off. So..... I don't remember what I paid for it, but I'm fairly certain it was less than $100. The reason I bought it, was that I had several dead/dying pines on the back of the property I wanted to remove prior to building a shed under them. I ended up dropping 7 or 8 trees and told my brother to come over with his chainsaw and help me cut them into logs for the fire. It just happened that I knew his father in law would want the logs, so the two of them came over with the trailer and the chainsaw. My brother....being the "buy the best" kinda guy he is, showed up with his Stihl 36" (or however big that dang thing is) saw, looking like the one of the kind they use in competitions on TV. We start cutting up the logs, and I'm not paying much attention, but I can see him eyeballing me every so often. After I had cut up about 10 small logs, I accidentally ran the saw in the dirt, and decided to go sharpen the blade again, as I could immediately tell it wasn't cutting as good as it should. So I stop the saw and start walking up to the garage to get the sharpener (which I have as an attachment for my Dremel), and as I'm walking by, my brother stops and asks...."How much did you pay for that thing?", I tell him..... and he starts reconsidering/justifying his purchase of the Stihl. It also didn't help that I had cut more logs up in the same time as him, and that was what he kept eyeballing while I was cutting.
Now, with that said....Do I think the Wild Thing is a better saw than the Stihl? Of course not, but It's a great little saw for me. A couple things about why I think I could cut as fast or faster then my brothers.... 1. The wild thing is much more compact and lighter, which makes using it much easier with less effort. 2. After every use of the saw, I sharpen it, and if it ever starts throwing saw dust (as opposed to pieces of wood), I sharpen it . With the dremel, sharpening is less than 5 minutes of work and has the Wild Thing cutting like a hot knife through butter. I pointed this out to him and showed him how I could tell my saw whas sharper than his. Price per log, (in my life) the Wild Thing is much more valuable. FYI, I haven't used it since that project..... but I assume it still cranks.