also interested in any views.do you agree with video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nGoqF7CNR8

I like the fact that the bearings are easy to replace, not sure about the rest, difficult to tell how much is marketing fluff!

There is a lot of fluff in there.

Boy! Did they spend a lot of time on pedal feedback

I like how:
-The VPP wheel path was said to be vertical and was shown as a straight line
-The single pivot wasn't shown in the path segment

Since Specialised bought the FSR design from AMP everyone has been trying to get round the legal problem of how to design a bike without it.

Great video though, and I love the bearing design.

Having had most suspension designs, I've got to admit to being very impressed with the seated pedalling performance of the i-drive. I also found that it wasn't that great when stood up; the suspension seemed to stiffen up, a bit like a URT design, but not quite that bad.

I think it is pretty much as good as they claim on the video. However, this is to the point of total isolation from the trail, meaning that you get no trail feedback, which makes most rides (from that perspective)quite boring. I reckon as a super fast A-B cross country race bike, as long as GT could reduce the weight sufficiently, it would be very efficient, but in my experience they don't provide the exciting ride I look for in an every day trail bike.

GT got well and truly shafted on the 'Horst Link' patent. GT were selling bikes (LTS) with what we now call a 'Horst Link/FSR' in Jan 94, Horst Leitner filed the patent in Sep 94. The patent wasn't granted until Apr 96, and I might be wrong on this but I think Specialized bought the patent sometime in 1998. The US was the only country that would grant the patent. They tried in other countries, Canada, UK, etc, but could not get it through because other companies such as GT were already using the design.

Anyhow, GT had planned for the I-Drive to replace the RTS in their suspension range and were going to have ranges made in the both the LTS and I-Drive platforms. In 98 and 99 GT made both I-Drive and LTS bikes, then the lawyers for Specialized started waving patents about and GT dropped the LTS. It was a bloody shame as well as the last LTS bikes came with Fox air-cans and cartridge bearings on all pivots, when most manufacturers were still using plastic bushings (I think Spesh started to use bearings instead of bushings in 2001).

Sorry for all that waffle I just thought I'd point out that GT didn't develop I-Drive because they couldn't use Horst Links. GT developed it as an alternative to Horst Link bikes as it addressed some of the inherent short-comings with the FSR design.