To answer the original question, "Is vaporizing all that good".
As someone who has recently retried it with one of the new high quality vapes (As opposed to those crappy soldering iron designs from 20+ years ago), I'd say emphatically "yes".
In a nutshell a good vaporizer will let you get nearly bong-like hits if you like, but with minimal harshness or irritation. You can take gigantic hits and especially if you're accustomed to actual smoking, barely even know you're doing so. You simply don't get the throat and chest "burn" that you will with smoking. Since you're not inhaling smoke, you don't cough/spit up smoke particles for 2-3 days after vaping. By not creating the smoke to begin with, you're also creating quite a bit less giveaway SMELL around where you're vaping or sticking to your clothes.
And there are the health benefits already mentioned above.
Downsides?
-Well, you do need the machine, and if you only have a plug-in one, that can limit WHERE you vape a bit. Of course portable vaporizers are also available, if you need to "vape" on the go.
-Vapor may not be as "tasty" as smoke, though I'd say the vapor actually gives you more of the clean taste of the actual bud, though with less intensity than smoke.
-More "head" high, less "body" high. This has to do with which cannabinoids are extracted in vapor, vs. extracted/destroyed with higher-temperature combustion.
If you want the "body" high, one way to help is to turn up the temperature of your vaporizer to the max you can before burning/combustion occurs. That way you're extracting as many of the cannabinoids as you can in the vapor. This definitely does help.
In converse, though, if you don't want the "body" high, you can turn the temp on your vape down, and get a pretty clear "head" high with most types of weed.
