Oh yeah. One more thing: I won't dive with divers who don't maintain their gear. One of my buddies about a year ago had a primary failure and switched to his octo (it was on a 5ft hose). I still laugh when I look at the photo of him, his hose bowed way out to his right... OTOH, I thought about that dive afterwards, and realize that I was stupid to dive with someone who didn't have my back, if my air source was interrupted. Granted, it was a shallow shore dive, but I'll never do that again. This is a guy who refused to take his gear in to get serviced because he didn't like the LDS. Not that we are lacking in LDS's.
How many of you regularly check whether your octo's are in working order? Or your buddy's? I dont mean one quick breath on the surface, I mean underwater. I used to think, so what, I won't be breathing from my own octo, so it's not as important. It used to get clogged full of green gunk floating in the water, with only a quick rinse after the dive. But now, since I switched to a long hose primary and bungeed octo, I KNOW both of my second stages work perfectly, because my buddy and I do air share drills at the beginning of each dive. One of my buddies recently bought a higher-quality octo after we did some air-share drills (he doesn't have long hoses). I had mentioned to him that his octo was breathing very wet, and very poorly. I am very thankful that he has replaced it with better, working gear.
When you're 100+ feet down, in cold, dark water, you want to make sure your buddy is ready to assist you with working gear, in case yours fails.