One advantage to the ceramic smokers too is their ability to hold heat despite the weather. Imagine trying to maintain temperature on a cold, windy, snowy New England day with one of those thin gauge metal smokers vs one of the 1 inch thick ceramic smokers.
BGE fans are a cult. Look around online and you can find stories of them going into big box stores when a new "Knock Off" is released, with them wearing T-shirts and evangelizing to the people what a rip off the one they are looking at is and why they should be buying a BGE.
Of course, for a while there the BGE was the only one on the market and actually was one of the less expensive ones. However, their success breeds imitators and there's a lot of them out there just as good if not better for a lower price. They are still quite the investment though. On the cheaper end is the "Acorn" which isn't ceramic but uses the same style with a double wall metal exterior and I've actually read some good stuff about them. Probably aren't as good as a BGE but maybe comes 90% as good.
As for me, I'm cheap, and broke...so I went with the UDS. It works off the same principle as it's a vertical smoker, and it was fun because I got to do all the work and design myself. If it didn't work out, I can go pick up another barrel and move my stuff over to the new one and try again. I've learned a few things on this one and looking at some of the stuff others have done with theirs I know how I'll do it next time. It's all fun.
As for brining...I'm a fan also. I'd read up on it, watched Alton Brown's show on it and really wanted to do it. The biggest problem with brining though that I've found is the amount of time required for prior planning. I'm not so good at that. Three Thanksgivings went by where I'd pull the bird out that morning and start prepping it for the oven and think "Damnit! I wanted to try brining this year!" A couple of years ago I set myself a myriad of reminders and pulled it off.
We presently live next door to my wife's family (Dad and grandparents) and it's awesome to have two kitchens going side by side for Thanksgiving. Well, they were skeptical about the brining and how salty it would be considering my wife's grandmother's restrictive diet, so her dad did one Turkey and I did mine. Needless to say, there were LOTS of leftovers of his turkey and mine got scarfed up. After that my wife declared that THIS was how I was to make the turkey from now until forever. So now she makes sure to start reminding me about the brining process days in advance.
