We got an old upright from our ex-landlord who repairs/restores pianos and pianolas, for £1600 as I remember. Boy, were we ripped off! Damn thing never held its tuning, and the pegs were so worn it never would without a total rebuild. We just recently traded it in for a Roland digi piano (£1200, £300 part-ex on the old one), cos we couldn't stand it any more.

You can definitely tell the difference in touch - even with weighted keys, it doesn't quite feel like the real thing, and the sound isn't quite like a proper piano either. It's an order of magnitude better than our old upright though in tone and feel! Plus of course you can choose different piano sounds with a digi piano (or organ, or whatever) which is always fun. And it's portable, or more accurately luggable (I seem to remember it weighs about 50lbs). And it takes up much less space too. So you're getting reliability, versatility, compactness and portability at the cost of some quality of sound and feel. Not a bad trade-off, really.

Best piano I've played though was a Steinway in a music shop. Lovely instrument - it did exactly what you wanted and sounded magic. Since we don't have £40k to spare though, and we're neither of us good enough to warrant it, that'll stay an "only-if-we-win-the-lottery" item!

Graham.