Piggy, I've been gathering info for months trying to choose my first pistol. Once I got theories, opinions, personal biases, and emotional likes and dislikes (as well as found this great forum and started to ask questions), I actually went and held: four different Sigs, several Glocks, HKs, Walthers, Kahrs, etc. Then I shot three Sigs (220, 239, and 229), Glock 17 and 19, and HK P7. I immediately ruled out Walthers for none was comfortable in my hand and HK - the slide was way too low and almost touched my hand when fired. I loved the way Glock shot, BUT the almost rectangular grips drove me nuts. I also felt somewhat uncomfortable of how light the Glocks' trigger was. Especially after I found myself having absolutely no troubles handling the longest double action. Even on Kahrs. Actually, after listening to a lot of people saying that the Glock trigger's safe enough, I'm planning on getting one of the smaller Glocks but ONLY to obtain Hogue grips for it right away. Well, at the end, I almost purchased P239 in 9 mm but...
There was the love from the first shot - 229. Not only as if the grip was custom made for my hand, the pistol shot so beautifully, I knew right then it was going to be the winner.
I'm sorry for the long post, but the bottom line is - shoot both, hold them, aim, and dry fire. Regarding 229 being a plague to the Sig/Sauer name, BS! I got tons of information from very reliable sources (one of them is people on this forum) which I carefully sorted out almost statistically -- despite the fact that there are always going to be manufacturing defects, plain lemons, and simply biased disgruntled folks with highly subjective personal experience, OVERALL, ANY modern Sig/Sauer is probably the most reliable, finely made, and gorgeously functioning pistol worldwide.
Good shooting,
Emin