Lot's of good perspectives here. I'm really enjoying reading this. I think there's room for both types of tents as they each have their own strengths.
No firsthand with hot tipi, well other than seeing Travis' at one of the Icebreakers. Looked pretty nice. I've spent a lot of time in the old USMC shelter-half tents, in a previous life though.
Wife and I have been camping in a Trango-2, and an Alaskan Guide 8-man for many years.
In cool temps above zero, below freezing, the Trango stays pretty nice inside just from body heat. The AG8 warms up quick with a single-mantle coleman lantern.
A couple years back we bought a 12x14 wall tent, with a cylinder stove. That thing is like a house. Awesome comfort. But it is a fair amount of work to put up/take down, it's heavy, bulky, and has big flat surfaces for the wind to work on.
So, a few days ago we put an order in with Seek Outside for a 12-man tipi. We are going to use it for camping and setup near the truck, and put the big wall tent stove in it for heat in the cold temps. Hoping we love it, as it looks like it will be excellent in wind, not heavy or bulky, and setup/takedown fairly fast.
In the last couple months I've been doing a lot of reading on these tipis on different websites. I've read a lot of Kevin's posts and do not recall him ever calling any other product inferior. He has shared a lot of info about the capabilities/limitations of his product, and how can anybody fault that?
