I've built 3 houses in the last 26 years. The windows on the first house (built in 1985) were Malta vinyl clad wood double-hung. I drive by the house frequently and the windows appear to be still going strong.
On my second house (built in 1995) I used Kolbe and Kolbe aluminum clad wood double-hung. Again, apart from a scratch or 2, the finish appears to be still going strong.
On my current house (built in 2005, and only a block away from the 2nd house) I used Pellas, a combination of Proline double-hung and Designer casements. As you know these are aluminum clad wood. No problems with finish or anything else. I will say that the cladding on the Pellas is thicker aluminum than the K&K windows, and that they are a better made window.
Contrast this with a friend's house built in 1987. He used Anderson double-hung. On these, only the jambs are clad, the sashes (as well as the door panels) are, according to the distributor at the time, Urethane coated. Now that turns out to be code for "PAINT". My friend's windows all have worn through "coatings" and need repair work. Besides that problem, it turns out that Anderson also only "coated" the end grain of the sills. He's got mold and rot developing on some of the windows.
Pella makes very good windows. I've never seen an Anderson / Malta / K&K / Marvin / ... service vehicle on the road, but I have seen Pella trucks. That means something to me, basically they have a higher level of service than the rest.
