I was thinking about upgrading my Isonic for a newer board for the upcoming season so have been surfing the net hard looking at alternatives.
The problem is i was looking at a more freeride style board to replace it but the majority of them have powerbox fins and my full fin collection is tuttle. This leaves me with the option of another full on Slalom board or a Futura. The last thing i want to do is buy more fins or have to send a brand new board in to get the finbox replaced with a tuttle box.
The Question is why have we let there be two finbox styles for so many years when it would be easier on the consumers to phase out one (powerbox in my opinion) over a few years and after that finbox style would not be an issue when buying a new board.
Has anyone else encountered this problem when considering a new board?
as i buy custom boards mainly, i just spec the box that has the best fins available.
in the case of slalom that's tuttle base, for freestyle/freeride that's powerbox and for wave i spec us box.
reality is that slalom boards need tuttle bases due to the high loads. on freeride boards the tail thickness can prevent tuttle bases from fitting and us bases aren't as tight so powerbox works best.
i've built up a few fins over the years, boards come and go but fins stay. i've even got similar fins in both us and power depending on board and conditions.
i guess all of the different bases have their place. now i'm using fcs style fins also so there is another fin type in the mix.
^what he said.
Powerbox definitely has it's place, it is simple and can take a greater load than US box. In a perfect world:
Slalom & freeslalom- tuttle
Freeride- power
Wave & freestyle- US
The biggest problem is with wave/freestyle/bump & jump boards- these can be powerbox, us box or fcs. Definitely no consistency there 
From what I recall Tuttle was the original bolt through fin box system. Mistral, F2, Fanatic and a few other big board brands got behind the Powerbox system. I think they offered it to anyone royalty free while Tuttle required a royalty, but it may be the other way round.
Tiga brought out its Conic box, which was similar to the Powerbox but was incompatible. Similar for Bic.
Guess the same question can be asked for computer operating systems or why certain equipment will only take certain connections. It all comes down to industry standards and in something like windsurfing there is no one that says "this is the standard" and everyone else will listen to them.
This question always puzzled me - why different fins for different styles of board? Are the fin manufacturers in cahoots with the board manufacturers? Maybe......
Gave up trying to understand their logic so I bought a range of fins over a few seasons to suit the boards and sail combos I have. Not cheap either!!!
For the Slalom I have 4 tuttles, 2 are standard and 2 are weed-free.
For the Freestyle I have 2 Power Box fins (used to have 3 but broke one clean off when a sand bar suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hit me).
For the wave I have 3 US fins from small to large (7" to 11").
Don't think we will change anything unless there is a consumer revolution.
