I see a lot of albums being remastered and re-released these days -- even albums that are fairly recent. Often times these albums have been remastered several times. I used to assume that these were always better, but I have come to the conclusion that most of the time they aren't -- at least when it comes to stuff released in the last ten years or so. Often times the only noticeable difference is that the overall volume is increased, with reduced dynamics as a result. I guess this is probably aimed at the whole "iPod generation"; people who probably aren't giving the music their full attention much of the time. I feel as if this is intended for people who listen to music while working out or driving, etc.
Japan has been known for quality remastering, and often times the physical releases made in Japan are of higher quality material than those made in the rest of the world (also with more visually appealing packaging, lyric sheets, etc). But I think the remastering being done in Japan has also gradually gone downhill for the most part.
It seems like most albums being re-released don't sound bad to begin with, and the whole thing is a cheap cash-in -- trying to get people to purchase the same music again. This seems especially greedy if the product is of an inferior quality. I guess there are some exceptions, like remasters done by Steve Hoffman, or albums re-released in the MFSL series, but I generally try to seek out earlier CD pressings.
What is everyone else's opinion on this? Are you a purist who seeks out the original recordings, or do you go for the most recent releases chock full of bonus tracks? I'm guessing the majority of people don't think about this sort of thing much.

Usually not. I'd say that only about 5-10% of them are truly superior to their unremastered counterparts. Like you said, they're usually just louder which reduces the dynamics.

What I've really come to enjoy are vinyl rips of classic albums. I know - they don't come with cue files (though you could manually generate one) and can't possibly be 1:1 rips unlike CDs, but damn - they sure can sound nice. I think I'll start burning vinyl rips of albums to CD.

I recommend this blog which has many good vinyl rips on it. Yes - there's a lot of crap on there, but there's usually about one good album for every ten shit ones which makes it worthwhile. (Note that I didn't hotlink to the site. This is because the guy who owns that blog doesn't want people to publicly post a link to his blog on forums as he doesn't want the "wrong" people to come across it. Oh, and me posting a link to the blog isn't breaking the TOS as links to the music on there are received through emails).

I am a fan of that guy's blog (henceforth referred to as Pbth*l, 'cause he seems like a stand-up dude and I'm sure he doesn't want any extra attention drawn from Google caching.) Pbth*l is one of the few vinyl rippers I like. He seems to know what he's doing and has a pretty fucking expensive/nice setup. There is one other guy who does excellent rips, which might even rival Pbth*l, but I don't think he has a blog with direct downloads. However, I sometimes get annoyed with the whole vinyl rip thing because many people seem to seek out these uber high resolution rips (done with shitty 100 dollar USB turntables and whatnot) and assume it sounds better.
I usually only listen to vinyl rips of older music because newer albums released on vinyl are usually made from the same digital masters as the CDs, so ripping the vinyl seems pretty pointless and will just introduce additional noise. But for older albums originally released on vinyl, I can the tolerate the hiss and crackle to some extent, to experience the authenticity of the early pressings.

I'm planning on getting the remastered Loveless album when it's released. Although the chances of that happening seems incredibly unlikely - it was supposed to have come out 2 years ago.
Forgot to write the liner notes, apparently. Balls.

Chances are I'll buy a Deluxe/Extended edition of an album if I don't have the original. If I do have the original, it depends mostly what the extras are. Even though I have their albums already, I did buy Keep Your Eye On The Sky by Big Star.

As for the original or remastered version of the album, I normally buy whichever one is the cheapest.
I only think albums are remastered - mostly the ones that were released 10+ years ago - is to make them at a similar dynamic level as todays CD's. I think some people assume that because it sounds louder it sounds better, whereas the quieter record would be seen as abit weak or not as intense, even if that's far from the truth.

i like classic rck and some jazz albums remastered more, but a few thing to consider about that are i've never heard the vinyl of those albums only in cd or mp3 format and those two aren't usually the best quality. there's something about listening to a record that sounds the best to me even though i've only listened to a handful of records before the hand me down player i used to have broke.