I went ahead and bought it. Super easy to use and I had good results considering it was the maiden voyage. I cooked 3 racks of pork spare ribs (14 lbs) and two chickens all at the same time.
Used a rub out of the manual that came with the smoker for the ribs which looked pretty standard. I cut the amount of salt it called for in half - and glad I did. Also, a little too much red pepper for the younger kids, so I'll back off of it next time. It didn't call for paprika but I added it anyway. So, with those three changes, I think it tasted very good.
Seasoned the outside and insides of the birds with a premixed seasoning, then stuffed the cavity with apple wedges, garlic, celery, and onions. Then tied the legs together.
Put all of this in the smoker and punched in a temp of 225 and a time of 5 hrs. I added a mixture of hickory and apple chips about once an hour. That was it. Chicken turned out very good. Ribs were surprisingly good considering it was my first time. I don't like my ribs "fall off the bone tender" as I think that makes them hard to eat with my hands. Rather I like for the meat to cleanly pull away from the bone with very little effort when bitten into. I actually nailed that part. Other than using less red pepper in the rub, the only thing I think I will change is to back the time off by about 30-45 minutes and try wrapping the ribs in foil after about 3 hrs of cooking in smoke like the manual suggests (I decided to skip that step as I was repairing the sprinkler system and was too dirty to be handling the food).
Overall, I would consider the purchase a success after the first cooking. The fact that I could get my honey-do's done and still put some fine food on the table in the evening got me some brownie points.