Alistair,
I have an 8" dob and when I got an equatorial mount I thought I'd just mount the OTA on it. It did work although it felt a bit unwieldy and a couple of times the gears protested a bit (prob a bit unbalanced too).
Soon after, I got an offer I couldn't refuse to buy an f/4 8" Newtonian reflector so I got that and put that on the mount instead and put the 1200mm OTA back onto it's Dobsonian mount.
I did like the simplicity of the Dob for viewing but found star hopping to be confusing and I was impatient and so looked into a goto mount (the EQ mount I now have). I have started to get into imaging now and am glad I went with the shorter tube for that reason. I tried taking photos using the dob (I don't have an argo-navis for it) and found it to be frustratingly difficult and imprecise, particularly since it did not have enough back focus (it's a GSO not a Skywatcher reflector).
I think, like many, I was unrealistic about what I could actually see visually from a suburban garden (with only the occaisional dark sky trip) - we are all a bit spoilt by hubble
Imaging goes some way towards closing the gap on that expectation in that you can start to take pictures approaching what you may have been initially hoping to see visually.
In short, for lunar, planetary and brighter clusters and nebulae I think the views are very rewarding with a dob, but if like me you're a bit impatient you'll want to move on from that to an EQ (or fork) mount and a different OTA.
Of course - then your budget starts to get stretched...
