Hi Matt

Welcome to the forum. You'll find the answer to almost any XT question here so most of your hard work has been done.

I use my XTR offroad every couple of weekends with my local TRF club. My choices when looking for the bike were similar to yours. Most of my time on the bike is on the road and occasionally two up. I have a small review of the bike on the Motorcyclenews page under the review section but to sum up:

For offroad riding I recommend the following:
* Bash plate - the Yamaha one will do but other companies do a better product (Metal Mule or Touratech)
* Hand gaurds - again, Yamaha product (made by Acerbis) will do but I have a set of UFO ones that cost �40 and the fitting kit will fit any set of bars.
* Renthal bars - They are thicker and come in a wide range of heights to suit your offroad riding style. Go for a high swept type of you are going to do a lot of offroading cause the strain on your wrists is reduced if you stand up and the bars are higher. As they are thicker, the Yamaha fittings for the bar weights and handguards may not fit. The bar fittings fro Yam are a ****** to get out too!
* Remove the rear footpegs and any aftermarker rack you fit for any off road use. This saves about 15kg of weight. Once you are riding in muddy ruts you'll be glad!
* Run the fuel tank half full when trailing. Anyone on a KTM, DR, WR etc will only have a 8l tank so theres no point taking an extra 7kg of fuel for you to muscle around.
* Tyres - get something with nobbles. I run a Michelin MT21 rear and a Conti TKC80 front. The rear is fine for most things but I'm going to try something more hard core for the front next summer. The conti's work well but are a pain down muddy lanes when you can't get any speed to clean them up. I'm only planning on running the bike offroad till about October then putting the road tyres back on. One thing I've learnt using the XT offroad is that you soon get used to sliding the back wheel on the road when it's still covered in mud! I don't mind doing it when I choose to but the knobbly tyres on wet roads are crap.
* Decent metal footpegs from touratech or similar.
* Folding clutch pedal as above.
* Angle grind the rear brake pedal so it sticks out half as far.

Optional offroad extras are getting a single pipe (saves weight and sounds cool), remove the front mudguard or raise it somehow for mud on the front clearance, engine bars to protect the pumps and rear brake reservoirs, softer grips and a metal radiator mesh. You can also alter the gearing for more bottom end but so far I've stuck with the stock gearing. I only really use 1st and 2nd offroad (1st in mud!) and only get into 3rd and 4th when on loose gravel (and then not even the guys on the KTM EXC400's can loose me!)

For the road I recommend:
* Medium or large screen (I chose the medium as the large one makes the bike look funny but it's your preference).
* Rack and box for touring.

I looked at the DRZ too but really wanted the Yam. I've ridden friends CR400's and a KDX200 two stroke and both were much better offroad machines. Ignoring those types of bikes whoch don't even have a key ignition, you're left with looking at the Yam XT660, Suzuki DR400, CRM (various), KTM (various), Aprilia Pegaso trail (same as XT basically) and some others that are imported.
The Yam may be a compromise offroad but it doesn't have to be on road as long as you don't want inline 4 performance.

Hope the bike goes well, let me know if you want any other info for road or offroad use.

Matt