Man what a bunch of BS. They don't even know crap about terminology, much less the details of forced induction. While I agree a supercharger is a better method for a street vehicle, it isn't for any of the reasons those guys mentioned.
First off, surge is not overboost, it's when you try to operate the turbo to the left of the surge line. The compressor stalls and the resulting shockwaves can literally destroy the compressor wheel. Surge applies to ALL fan turbines including fan jet engines. They describe overboost or spiking in their explanation, not surge.
The BS about the hot side of the turbo heating the intake charge is beyond ignorant. Air heats under compression plain and simple. It doesn't matter how you raise pressure, when pressure increases so does temperature. See:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/boyle.html for a great explanation. Claiming a supercharger doesn't benefit from an intercooler is just plain dumb. Toyco put an IC on the MR2 SC for just this reason (yeah, I used to have one, it was a great street car).
Their whole discussion of efficiency show complete ignorance of air compressor technology. Vortech superchargers are very high efficiency compressors and equal any good turbocharger because the compressors are identical. Roots type blowers are the least efficient, with the best barely breaking 60%. There are other types, like
Lysholm Products.
These should look VERY familiar to TRD fans. Screw type compressors have efficiencies between Roots and Vortech, but fundamentally, efficiency is how much air compression you get for the amount of energy expended, not how you drive the turbine.
Backpressure on a turbo system all depends on the hot side selection and your tolerance for lag. Full race systems are typically positive pressure systems, meaning intake manifold pressure exceeds exhaust manifold pressure. Most OEM systems are negative pressure systems, but this is simply from manifold and turbo selection.
The reliability and tunability pieces are so wrong, I don't even want to comment on the mental midget who made those baseless allegations.
So, why do I like a supercharger over a turbocharger? I've owned and maintained both. I had an '89 MR2 SC, and I still have a '93 TT Supra. I modified both, and have driven both, including some extreme Supras with over 700 hp. A supercharger feels better on the street. Boost come up right away, and is a simple function of rpm. It's easy to get a good launch from a stop light, and it's easy to grab a gear and jump on the gas if someone wants to play.
Not so the turbo. You have your foot on the floor while you're waiting for boost to build, and the guy next to you in the Camaro with heads and cams is holding steady until the boost gauge jumps up over 1.0 kgf.
That wait seems like hours. OTOH, on the freeway in third at a moderately legal speed, standing on the gas makes the turbo car boost almost immediately and rocket you from 70 to 150 like a 0-60 run in most cars.
In either case, if you plan to get a significant amount of power from 2.4 liters, plan on spending a lot of money on fuel. I run 4 gallons of 100 octane to 14 gallons of 91 in my Supra just to keep detonation at bay, so a tank of gas is about $50, and that's only slightly more than 93 octane (the old premium here). 100 octane all by itself is $5.69 a gallon. You won't get big power from small displacements without big boost and good fuel for long. I can show you lots of pictures of blown Supra engines from bad fuel or too much boost with low quality fuel. 91 octane is bad, and horsepower comes from your gas tank.
