Ultegra Di2

I took the Di2 plunge in January as last years bikes came down into my price bracket. It's great, slick and smooth and versatile.

I did have problems though. But these were not the fault or design of Di2. First the retailer tuned the RD at the extreme of it's limits meaning there was no scope for fine tuning. This meant noise, dodgy shifting and frustration. Second, I tuned it myself using Shimano's etube software (see http://sites.google.com/site/di2pcinterfacerental/)and didn't connect the shifter connector properly resulting in a loose connection and a very fickle RD. Thankfully both have now been sorted and I'm getting the full benefit of Di2...fast shifts, smooth shifting on climbs, no chain rub...etc

I don't know what happened to Wiggo (although I saw the video) but, to state the obvious, the whole mechanism doesn't fail in the event that you can't shift gear. You can still carry on pedalling. Maybe Wiggo urgently needed to change gears going uphill and it failed at a critical moment?

Surely the failure that wiggo had, as opposed to prototype issues, was the electronic equivalent of a sheared cable, highly unlikely but still possible

Apparently Mavic created an electronic gear system in the 1990's and it was dropped. When I bought my bike, I figured that the fact that di2 has been around since 2008/9(?) and it's been through a second stage, that it's around to stay. The question you ask yourself when you start using it is, how come noone thought about this before?

It sounds like the couple of recent issues in the pro peleton with electronic shifting are from the use of pre-production prototypes.

I've not heard of anyone having reliability problems with Ultegra Di2.

wrt being a passing phase - no chance! i'm very confident it's here to stay but i don''t think it's the death of cables either, the two can live in harmony

I have it on my current bike and like it. I would personally say that the biggest advantage is no chain rub. The other noticeable advantage is the shifting on the front chainset. Smooth, quick change from 50 to 34 and back. Rear derailleur isn't so noticeable in my opinion - although still advantageous.

It's supposed to be uber reliable. I haven't covered too many miles yet but certainly haven't encountered any problems.

The common opinion I hear is that in practical use, it feels like a game-changer, shifting under any amount of pressure, auto-trimming the front, and auto-calibrating thus avoiding the cable tension issues that lead to not being able to access one or two gears etc.

On the flip side, Chris Boardman (in an interview with 'Cyclist' mag, I think) reckoned that it needs to evolve first, and lose some weight.

I don't honestly know which group I would pick if purchasing right now. Ultegra mech or di2, or SRAM Force.