I've only been riding a couple of years myself, so not exactly a lot of bikes for comparison under my belt but I have to agree, I'm now going to waffle for quite a bit, so feel free to skip down a post!
I'd bought myself a CG125 to practise on (still have it for bad winter days) and the learner school had Sym 125s. The school moved me on to a Kawasaki ER-5 which even in my limited experience was best described as a top heavy agricultural tractor that tried to either gas me with it's unburnt hydrocarbons or throw me off by tipping over at every available opportunity. Though to be fair, I'm thinking that the girders masquerading as crash bars, welded on by the A-Team, might have not helped in that respect. I think they took pity on me though, as for my test they let me loose on a brand new XJ6, now we are talking, this was silky smooth and effortless.
Started looking for that first big bike, ruled out the GSF 600 Bandit straight away, a mate I took my test with had bought one cheap, though it was all right to ride, we already had matching outfits from learner days and old ladies were stopping us and asking if we were the police, seriously, and more than once! With my XJ6 experience I have the feeling that steered me subconsciously towards a Fazer, I was still shopping around on Biketrader and eBay but kept reading how good the Fazer is, described by one review as looking a bit 80s disco, and I'm a bit 80s disco so that was it, a Fazer it was. A 2000 FZS600 with 20k on the clock came up on eBay for £1800 but with a cracked fairing from an alleged stationary topple (yeah right), though otherwise well looked after, it didn't meet the reserve but I was the top bidder, so a few emails later and a phone conversation I managed to beat the seller down to £1100 and it was mine. Went down to London to pick it up, rode all day long around the city before heading home with a very big grin. Two years later that grins still there, and so is Freddie the Fazer, other bike owners keep asking me when I'm going to get another bike, I only ever have a one word answer for them, "why?".
That's the end of the party political broadcast by the Fazer party.