I've been a long time lonely planet user, but I have used Rough Guides in the past as well. the Rough Guides never seemed to have anything not in LP, but were bulkier books.

I don't use any guide for hotels or eating. Anything listed in the guide will have a 10 percent price increase once the book is published, unless you are in a remote area, plus I seem to find nice places myself.

I've looked thru other guides, and never really saw much different between what was contained in Frommers, Rough Guide, LP, Eyewitness. Plus LP now sells single downloadable chapters out of it's guides, which I'm finding usefull (only tested with the Venice chapter of the Veneto guide, Slovenja so far). Was able to print out only the sites section, skipping all the restaurant, hotel etc info (these were int eh chapters I paid for, jsut didn't bother printing). The onyl drawback was that the office laser printer did not help with the maps - but I almost always buy a cheap map wherever I go anyway. I'm not sure which if any of the other guides are doing this now.