Well, you have to start somewhere... Somewhere called hire out a dyno and have enthalpy come tune your ems.... He's proven hundreds of time over that hes the PREMIUM in the tampa area.
I agree that XAT is moving on to bigger and better things, but I'm not going to take my car into their "learning curve".
The Ignition for Megasquirt is crucial so that you have control of all parameters, given how cheap the cost is, I would definately do the ford EDIS setup or anything I could to get programmable ignition. That is the key between being "average joe" and "20rwhp above average joe"
In my opinion with time and patience one could make an after market EMS have the same driveability and reliablity as a factory ECU.
Already been done. Its called any EMS that Enthalpy has tuned. If you've never ridden in a car tuned by him, or seen his own personal car idle like stock on 282 cams and 95lb injectors... Then you havent seen a well tuned car
You can do this with any ems system, not just AEM. Just requires time and effort on the guy behind the wideband. Not only tuning for WOT, but also remaking all the part-throttle maps, cold start values, tuning the knock, and ignition values. You can make any car idle like stock and be streetable (within certain reason, like no T88H's giving 5psi at 3K rpm at 20% throttle).