The advantage of the Omnifuel is that it has a valve at the burner which allows for simmering. The advantage of the Whisperlite is that it's less expensive, quieter, and lighter.

I haven't spent a lot of time scouring the lines of any of my MSR stoves, but I usually do a flip stop which purges the line. See the fourth video down on my blog for a demonstration of the flip stop. If you've got an Omnifuel, I imagine that you already know what I'm talking about.

HJ

Yes I know about the flip stop, but it's still nice to have that cable I imagine. If either of mine somehow plugged up at the line, I'd have no way to clean it (it doesn't unscrew either). I'll probably never need it, but I'm one of those rather have it than not person.

Makes sense, and I know guys who have absolutely had to use the scouring cable.

HJ

I took the MSR Whisperlite Universal out to the East Fork of the San Gabriel River today for some field trials. The more I use it, the more I like it.



HJ

Can you use the butane/propane gas cartridge adapter that is supplied with the Whisperlite Universal with the Primus Omnifuel Pump?

Yes. Or, well, I'm pretty sure anyway. I haven't tried it. Maybe tonight I'll give it a go.

HJ

Is there an included stand that will allow you to invert the canisters for liquid feed? (Im guessing no from what I see in the picture)

Stand? What Stand? We don' need no stinking stand?....

Seriously, just turn it over and go. If necessary, prop it with a rock or something..

There is an included stand in all of the official documentation I've seen from MSR. However, when MSR sent me a copy of the stove for the purposes of my doing a review, the stand was missing.

So, I can't comment from first hand experience about the stand, but it definitely will be part of the package when the stove becomes available to the public.

HJ

Yeah, pretty much.

Some of us have been using MSR stoves with the canister upside down (for cold weather) for some time. It's sort of the undocumented feature (and a very nice feature indeed) of MSR gas stoves. People "in the know" were aware of the capability, but the general public was not. The standard practice was to just flip the darn canister over and go. The old Rapidfire had kind of a stiff coupler that would hold the canister upside down, no problem, and was great for inverted canister use. The newer Windpro was a little trickier, especially with larger canisters, but like Hikemor says, just use a rock or something to lean the canister against.

I can't for the life of me understand why MSR hasn't heretofore publicized the ability of their Windpro (and now Whisperlite Universal) to run with the canister upside down. Running upside down allows one to run down to about 0F/-18C on gas. That's so much better than struggling along with an upright canister stove that can only go down to about 20F/-7C over the life of the entire canister (yes, you can go lower with a fresh canister). I would have thought that MSR would have marketed the heck out of a capability like that, but perhaps they were worried about liability?

HJ