A ton of people will chime in on this... I obviously have one based on photo - very satisfied. I don't say that about a lot of purchases in life.
Rhonemas hit the nail on the head in that you don't want to use them to take the chill off a room for a couple hours - it's overkill and much more $ than you should spend for that. But if you're interested in 24x7 burning, they are among your best options. They hold heat and coals a ridiculously long time - we go 12 hours regularly, and occasionally over 15 hours. After 12-15 hours, it's still typically in the 150-250 range with enough coals for a restart without kindling or effort.
I agonized over cat vs. non-cat as well when I was shopping. Being a chemical engineer, I decided that I could probably figure out how to use a catalyst correctly and I thought the concept was technically sound - I will never go non-cat after owning a cat and using a few non-cats. I can also tell you you don't need to be a chem-e to use it
But for everyone who tells you that, you'll hear the opposite... net is both work for people when used correctly, and both cat and non-cat can work poorly when not used correctly.
As for durability, from what I hear on this forum, some VC cast iron units seemed to have serious problems with gasket failures and expensive rebuilds. I haven't noticed that with any of the stone stoves from any manufacturer - not sure if that is due to differences in thermal expansion or different sealing methods. I was going down the road of nice enamel VC until reading about many many $500+ rebuilds that people were doing.
The stone surface will scratch if you're rough on it - but you can buff it out with steel wool. Can't do that with a chip in enamel or a gouge in steel. That being said, we roast things in pots on our surface and use a steamer and none of those has left a mark. I haven't tried frying an egg on the stone as some claim you can...
Window cleaning would probably be harder than most due to andiron position, but I've never had soot on the glass of my stove - not really sure how to make it get dirty. I do burn good wood so maybe that is why; other stoves I've used were bad with soot problems and really annoyed me.
Side loading again is a love it or hate it issue. For us, it actually served a unique purpose - by not having a front door, we were able to have our wood floor come much closer to the front of the stove and still meet code - this made our retrofit install much less intrusive to the flow of the room. Once you have an operable door, you need 18" of protected floor in front or to side of it. For the same reason, side doors may not work in your install depending on where you would put it.
Finally, for ash removal with a Fireview - I would strongly recommend the Pilgrim brand ash pan that you'll see on their website. Just so happens that it lines up very neatly under the lip of the door so you don't drop anything on the floor. A Fireview will give you a larger firebox at the expense of an ash pan - their other models give you an ash pan but a little smaller firebox. Both are well regarded - depends on your preference. I shovel ours about once every two weeks this time of year; will get to once a week in dead of winter. I didn't believe that when Woodstock told me, but it's true. One thing I've also learned is you don't really want to be too careful cleaning it out - some ash left in there helps get fires going. So it's really quite easy - you're not trying to get things spotless inside there.
-Colin
