I have to admit I used to be squarely in the camp.

But I changed .. I'm not firmly and securely part of the community with regard to claimed specs.

So what changed?
Nikon did. Nikon first let me down with claimed specs about 10 years ago .. for me only to find out that those claimed specs came with conditions attached.

Any notion that I'm a Nikon crew/fan-boy/advocate/groupie/devotee is a misplaced observation by the folks on the other end of this communication medium.
One thing I'm not is a Nikon fan boy. I hate many of the things they do just as much as the next person.

What specifically changed was the D300!
I wasn't really suckered into getting a D300 due to the spec claims as such .. I was due for a better camera, and some of the features seemed much better in the D300 compared to what I had(D70s) and what I had planned to replace it with D200.

The specific let down(s) were:

1/. 6fps frame rate advance
and
2/. live view mode

1/. Nikon claimed 6fps for the D300 which at the time was pretty good. quite high and more than enough for the amateur, non sport-pro-10fps-speed-hungry demon!
I'd never needed 6fps before, but this camera came with it .. NOT!
Well it did if you shot 12 bit raw mode.
But as a landscaper, with an eye on future possible developments .. I shoot quality settings maxed out as much as the camera allows.
That means 14bit uncompressed raw, for me.
No problem, just set it to 14 bit raw mode.
Well not quite so fast folks!... because 14 bit raw mode only gave 1(and a small bit) fps.
For a landscapader that's fine, I hear you think! Not so, in some situations.
HDR is harder to do, bracketed images felt like ... a--dyi--ng---ba---tte---ry kind of stuttering feeling.

Anyhow, the limit on that sensor was read the specs carefully or get nothing like you thought you would.

2/. Liveview mode. We all take it for granted this newfangled Lv mode. Nikon first came to the party with the D3/D300 with Lv mode.
My first reaction was that this was the feature that pushed me from a would be D200 buyer to becoming a D300 owner.
Camera on tripod, Lv mode enabled, Lv preview now through the big screen, all lights now on, more lights added, ,ore lights added again, aperture set to about f/11, but in reality about f/128 or so .. and I can now focus properly on the part fo the image at the end of what looks like a magnifying glass, connected to vacuum cleaner stalk, connected to a drain pipe, connected to a black box. That's how focus bellows work. Image is awesomely dark, and seeing is next to impossible. Lv makes that a bit easier .. not for the digitally brightened view so much(although that's handy) but more so for the larger image and the ability then to see larger detail parts.
Then came the crash .. and more crashing and banging and clanging and blurring and .... crap!
Nikon, in their wisdom, thought that Lv mode and taking an actual exposure were incompatible procedures, so made it as hard to do it as they could work out how too.
Lv mode = mirror up. Mirror already up, so now the easy part is to actuate the shutter only. Mirror should now be rendered immovable. No! .. not Nikon. They need to do it the Nikon way. They want the mirror to flap about at 6Hz just for the sake of annoying the operator. I can't think of any other possible excuse for the way it was implemented like that. Nikon did that so the mirror which is already up, has to come down, then up again just before the exposure is shot. Imagine how that affects sharpness on a long gangly bellows setup!

So I got 2 for the price of one. the 1.5 fps limit bugged me more, and my intention was to mainly use the Lv for composition and not so much for exposure anyhow.
Lv mode wasn't as important as a let down, but it still bugged me that they did that. It seemed to be a lot more effort to engineer it that way, than to just leave the mirror up at all times, until Lv was turned off.

Then Nikon(and Sony was more to blame here) provided the other specs let down.
Before the hype over the D800's 36Mp came the D3x and the Sony A900 and then the Sony A850. They all had the 24Mp 135 format sensor.
Apparently very good sesnor back then .. except Nikon and Sony colluded to dupe the public with it yet again.
The stated specs for the D3x was 5fps from a 24Mp sensor .. quite good. Same with Sony too.
But the gotcha again was that if you don't mind using 12bit mode .. again. 1.5fps if you prefer your higher quality 14bit raw files.... thankyou!


So .. do specs make you drool, feel like a fool ... or make you fall to sleep ... at the pool!*(hey! I had to make that rhyme too).

Take2: So .. do specs make you drool, feel like a fool ... or impart your personality as being cruel(because you are intrinsically sceptical and look past the BS)?