Maybe "best" was not he best choice of terms. Maybe "prefered".
I am thinking of trying this thing out
http://gregwired.com/pano/Pano.htm
Looks pretty cool, and the price is right for individuals and small companies. Yes, those automatic pans heads are awesome, but certainly not cheap.
I guess I want to try the panhead head because I always felt that coming up with a sdolutin for a rig with the chrome sphere always seems to be a bit of a hassle. I have seen quite a few solutions, all of which are jerry rigged in one way or another. It seems like it may be easier to have only a pan head, tripod, and camera, then to have to set up a jerry rigged sphere everytime. Sometimes of course this is not a big deal, but say you want to shoot on the street etc.
Just wondering if anyone has a preference or one way over the other.