Enjoyable thread this.
I have an ancient Rega Planar 3 with the cool glass platter, but not the SME arm. It's one of the original Rega arms and not very good.
I think Vinyl can sound great, but Alan is right - CD is just more accurate. Vinyl, and valve amps for that matter, can have a warm sound that is quite relaxing, and if you like it that's fine. The only problem I find with CDs or other digital sources is that the clean extended top end can emphasise deficiencies in speakers, room acoustics or in original analogue recordings.
My turntable is only used these days to transcribe my record collection to FLAC files for playback via my Logitech Squeezbox.
I also agree with Ian about the nostalgia and aesthetic value of an LP
