Would appreciate advice for chain saw purchase - Stihl MS 290, Stihl MS 260 Pro, Homelite UT10520

Not really. It breaks down like this - owners of 290s/310s/390s love them while owners of Dolmers think they (290/310/390) are overweight and underpowered.

You have lots of company here.

with a 036 iam sure the 290 wouldnt be impressive big money differnce as well

I think Dolmar is the great bargain saw these days, they give you a lot more saw for the money - perhaps because they put more of the cost into making saws instead of advertisements.... I love my 7900, which I use for most things, including felling and limbing. Never used a 5100, but it felt really nice when I picked one up the other day at the Bangor show.

It is good that you have dealers nearby, though my experience w/ many of the dealers listed on the Dolmar website wasn't really good - seemed like I knew more about the line than they did... However, there are also some excellent shops out there, so that may not apply... I also don't see that there is a huge amount of "magic" about having a Dolmar dealer as opposed to a "brand X" shop - there isn't anything that odd or unusual about a Dolmar, and parts are available readily, so I don't see any reason a good saw guy couldn't fix the rare Dolmar problem just as readily as he could the same issue on a Brand X saw.

As to Husky and the Big Box stores - my understanding is that Husky quality depends highly on the "grade" of saw... The "consumer-grade" Huskys are made in Asia, and are essentially Poulans (owned by Husky) with orange covers, and like modern Pull-on's, quality is questionable at best. The Pro-grade Husky's are still made in Europe, and are still high quality... Guess which versions of Husky are sold in the Big Boxes.... By the same token, my local True Value hardware store sells Stihl, along w/ Husky, Echo, and a large range of other OPE... I don't see a huge difference between True Value and some of the other Big Boxes, other than the question of who owns the franchises...

Gooserider