I use them for a while, then get fed up with the faff of carrying cartridges : some of my business travel is by plane, and it's more stuff that I need to put in the plastic carry-on bag with my toothpaste, and more stuff I need to remember to take out before a meeting so I'm not unpacking everything to be able to write down the important thing my customer just said.

Fountain pens do make me write much more neatly. But I do often end up with inky fingers.

I also use the .38 gel ink from Muji, and always have an emergency biro or two in my laptop bag.

Gold Cross fountain pen is my trusty companion . Will admit to more fountain pens than is good for me .

I was at a lecture at the Medical school in Newcastle recently and the audience was full of venerated surgeons it was wall to wall Mont Blanc's .

When people ask to borrow a pen I find some hand it back for fear of damaging it . Being a couple of years older than you (49) I was also expected to write with a fountain pen at school .

I used to work with someone who swore by them and it sort of rubbed off on me (not literally). That or the classic WH Smiths HB pencil.

although I'm not a surgeon. When I was a student it was the only thing that could keep up with the speed of my handwriting and render it legible. I've had it 30 years. I also use a Mont Blanc ballpen, which is very good, smooth and reliable. And I have a steel Faber Castell mechanical pencil when I'm editing stuff and don't want to make a permanent mark

from the Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia in Florence. €2 a pop.

My number one pen is a vintage blue-marbled Conway Stewart from the 1950s - restored ink sac and all. It's a great writer and I use it all the time, usually with Parker Penman ink, ruby or emerald (now sadly discontinued - there'll be tears before bedtime when I use my last bottle!). I have a reissued Parker Duofold and, frankly, the Conway Stewart blows it away.

I use a 4-colour gel ink pen at work - I use more green and red than I do blue and black!

Since I've had access to the stationery order website I've been experimenting with all sorts. I do like to write my capital E's without a spine though. Like on The Eagles' On The Border.

black fineliner, made in Japan (Mitsubishi), €2.50 each. Smooth and ahem manly.

Jeez, haven't filled a fountain pen since I was a kid (circa 1973), or seen one in a very long time.
Pens are ok to a point (any puns accepted gratefully). I do like the big green cheepie Pentels if push comes to shove, and the Uniball Micros are very easy on the hand, but I'm most fond of a Mont Blanc I was given as a thank you. Nice and weighty.
However, I've been an enthusiastic user of tablet PCs since the first ones came out about 7 years ago, and I quickly got to the point where I couldn't live without it, particularly Onenote. Since I was working on multiple projects, multiple customers and so on, using a note pad for all the meetings I would fill 200 pages every couple of months, and once I was 5 pages or so further on in the pad I could never find anything, much less organise it or keep track of things. With Onenote I could search it (even the ink), sort it, highlight it with tasks and follow ups and so on. It'll be interesting if and when Apple come out with something in the tablet line. Kind of made ink a bit redundant for me.
Having said that, the big hassles were battery life which is a pain in the neck, and I could never convice my employer to get a lightweight pure slate-style job (screen only), rather than the folding hybrids with keyboards they insisted on. I needed the slate a lot more often than I needed the keyboard or DVD drives.

I hated using a fountain pen at school and stopped as soon as I got the chance and I never ever used one for homework. My handwriting used to be appalling but I spent a long time when I was at college improving it so that I could take notes legibly in lectures. Then, when I wrote slowly my writing was quite attractive. The thing is that I do so little handwriting these days that it's now mainly horrible to look at and largely illegible. I've been sorting out some old cassettes recently and the writing on the inlays is excellent, I just can't do that these days. Now that there's a computer within easy reach most of the time and since my typing speed overtook my handwriting, there's rarely any point in actually handwriting anything.
Now if I write anything it's usually in pencil (0.7 Pentel HB) because it's easier to make corrections with. My preference for a ballpoint is a very lightweight Bic which is the sort that hotel chains in the US leave in the rooms so I never have to buy one.

Works ever so well. Would love to use a fountain pen in theory, but my handwriting is so bad it would be a waste.

and the blood of my latest vic...

No, er, sorry. Quite like a fountain pen. Don't mind a rollerball. If I'm drafting something I prefer a pile of sharp HB pencils.

...Lamy fountain pen. It just works perfectly and goes on working, too. A consequence of an education in the late '50s and early '60s, I guess, and I hate biros but I'll use some of the (usually) Japanese gel pens. Heartening to read this thread - I rarely come across anyone else with a fountain pen

As you might guess from my nom de blog, I use a fountain pen. While I envy all you Mont Blanc owners, if I had one I would live in terror of losing or breaking it. My pen of choice is the Lamy Safari.

The Safari is cheap (about £13 usually), comes in all kinds of colours, both sober and bright, and has a barrel shaped so that it fits perfectly into the hand. It's a lovely piece of design.

What's more, I have the feeling that I think more clearly when I'm writing with a fountain pen. Does anyone else agree?

I use a WH Smiths fountain pen, which strangely I find more comfortable and smoother than the Gold Cross pen I was given. I also started the habit at secondary school though it stopped at University for some reason. At my children's primary school it's a measure of success & reward to move up to fountain pen.

My handwriting has become so much worse now that I use the keyboard for 95% of all written communication.

Mostly, but not so often these days....

which I still use for special occasions - signing important contracts, big cheques etc etc - although more for sentimental reasons than anything else.

My regular pens are cheapy John Lewis fine point rollerball from Waitrose

I do have a bit of a thing for Rotring Isographs/Rapidographs though.

and a biro.

on the rare occasions that I do actually write as opposed to typing. With an HB lead. i started using a pencil rather than a pen because I still use a paper diary and found that it got into something of a mess if I used pen and then had to cross out meetings, re-arrange appointments etc.

and a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck rollerball, Cross Townsend fountain pen as a back up...

- switched from berol finewriter when my notebook went through the wash and came out blank. I think WHSmith sells the Berol for about £2. They actually cost 19p each bought through school in boxes of 12.

Bic transparent biros for work. Can't use anything with water-soluble ink.

I would use my Cross fountain pen for extra smartness, but I misplaced it in the last house move :-(