CR,
We have neither, but like you we have been thinking it over and doing some research. From what we read, we think you are right about a RIMS setup being a bit easier to pull together. The only draw backs we've read about was scorching of the wort because of an oversized heat element and/or to low a flow due pump limitations or restrictions. All should be easily overcome. The second was cleaning. We wonder if the cleaning issue was related to the scorching. We read about many very successful systems with none of these problems.
We liked the HERMS systems only because you could set it up to have only one heater running in the HLT and you could use an IC in the HLT for an exchanger. That would save on the electrical set up. In addition, the wort did not come in contact with the heating element eliminating the possibility of scorching and cleaning problems.
What have you finally come up with?
Preston