I've been interested in getting one for a long time, but every time I get the money together, something else comes up. I've handled (not shot) a few and I love the feel. The only down side is the cracked lower reciever. It is not only caused by dry firing. People on hkpro seemed to have narrowed it down to the bolt hold open feature. I have yet to see a first hand report of a crack occuring on one when the owner has disabled that feature. I realize that for a couple thousand dollars HK should have redesigned the gun so this doesn't happen anymore, but I still think they are worth the money. And since the only thing the crack does is stop the bolt hold open from working, I really don't see why new owners that know about the problem wouldn't disable it. It's gonna stop working at some point, so why not do it before your nice gun breaks? Before you buy one, check to see what the warrenty is. Apparently, some have lifetime, and some have limited time. I haven't come across this, but I've heard people talking. Now the good news is, if it has a life time warrenty, they are just being reintroduced to the American market, so it would seem that they will still be in production for a while. There was concern that production would stop and the supply of replacement recievers would dry up. If you haven't commited to buying it from Italian Sporting Goods yet, check out Wolverine Supplies. The last time I priced one out, John at Wolverine was a few hundred cheaper. I'm all for supporting the local guys (who are great at Italian, by the way) but a few hundred bucks is a few hundred bucks. Here's a couple links for you to check out. Just add the www. in front.
hkpro.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21336&highlight=sl-8
sminnick.com/gun/sl8crack.html