I have some kettle envy too, but the wonderful thing to me is that they are all essentially the same, at least in terms of cooking. The mighty Weber has stood the test of time since it was first designed, and yeah, you're right, a basic kettle is good enough to make you the best cook on your block without either you or your grill breaking a sweat.
About a year ago, I snapped up a free 22 ots from CL. The guy was giving it away because he had gotten a new awesome giant combination side-box style griller/smoker for Father's Day. I congratulated him on his 8-foot monstrosity crammed onto his small patio, and asked about how he liked cooking on it. He told me this long tale of woe of a 15-hour Sunday session where he tried to smoke some butt on it. Which ended up with him exhausted from all of the fire-tending, and a butt that didn't even taste good. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was giving away a far superior smoker... I took it home, cleaned it up, and gave it to my buddy, who was turning out great butts from his very first try. Besides all the steaks, roast chickens, etc..
Weber: the one and only. FTW!