Hey Barney, which Lowe's has the Porter Cable set up? I'd like to look at one in person. The Lowe's website is pretty thin on info about it (and the P-C site doesn't seem to list them), so I'd like to get a better look. I'm curious to see what type of belt it has and get a good look at the fence. Also, are the table extensions stamped steel or cast iron? (The Ridgid has cast iron extensions, which was a big selling point for me.) Having the blade tilt crank on the front isn't a big issue, in my opinion. I don't think most guys change the blade tilt very often. I'd be more interested to see if it complicates or simplifies the blade tilt mechanism. (More complicated means more opportunity for something to stop working right.) Having it on the side also helps keep me from accidentally grabbing the wrong crank and messing up my perfect 90º setup when I'm trying to raise or lower the blade.
I can understand the desire to see a major tool like this set up before pulling the trigger on buying it. At the time I bought my Ridgid, Home Depot still had their big tools on display. Lowe's was selling a similarly-priced Hitachi, and the one at my local Lowe's was set up pretty well. The Ridgid over at Home Depot, though, had apparently been assembled by baboons with a poor work ethic. Plus, someone had spilled a Coke all over it and it hadn't been cleaned up. The handcranks were missing and the fence was inoperable. Still, when I looked at the specs, reviews, and recommendations by others on the web, the Ridgid seemed the best, so I took a gamble and went with it, even though the store display machine was a mess. Turns out I made a good choice. The Hitachi saw disappeared from the market within a couple of years, while the Ridgid has continued to improve.
I know Ridgid used to have a pretty good user forum on their website. (I've not visited it in a few years.) I wonder if there might be someone on that forum who owns the latest Ridgid in the ABQ area and would be willing to let you come see it?
As an aside, my 3650 had a very nice fence, but I eventually replaced it with an Incra fence setup that I won in a drawing. (The fence was worth nearly what I'd paid for the saw itself.) Then I added a router table extension to it, so it's grown into quite a monstrosity.