:You've had several good responses which point to the advantages and
disadvantages of each. A lot of the stuff is subjective and / or strictly
based on personal opinon or need. There's good reasons to go with either,
depending on what you need.

There's one thing that I think is absolutely true and not debatable - the
inboard or I/O takes up significant interior space.

This is not much of a factor if all you need is for people to sit be able to
sit in the seats for, say cruising or water sports. The I/O's I've been
familiar with, even though they dominate the rear of the boat, have adequate
and comfortable seating space.

For other activities that require either a lot of moving around space,
standing around space or storage space - activities such as fishing, camping
or hunting, for instance, the outboard could be a real advantage because of
the interior space they free up, especially with hulls less than 20 feet
(the inboard engine takes up the same room whether the boat is 18 feet or 28
feet, therefore, it's much less of an issue, with the 28 footer). I use my
boat a lot for these things - family camping trips, and multi person
fishing. I switched from I/O to outboard because of this and have been very
happy with this particular aspect. I had a 19 footer with an I/O type and
it was very difficult for any of these activities because the engine "dog
house" took up most of the rear.

Just my personal experience and opinion.

Grissy

"HugYourPug" wrote in message
...
What are the relative merits of each. I have been looking at some boats
and the
inboards seem to offer a lot more boat for the money, but a lot of people
buy
outboards, so there must be some merit there. Fishing, cruising and skiing
are
the objective.