CameronSmi,
It comes down to preference. With a double crank you're better of with a 9 or 10 speed cluster. Unless you're running a corn cob or close rings, you'll always get some large jumps and awkward gears. It's fine for racers and mountain bikers, but it's not for everyone.
With a triple however, you can use 6,7,8 or 9 and get useful gears that isn't painful to shift. Take a 26/44/48 with a 12-32 8sp or 11-32 9sp. You can ride over most terrain in either the 44 or the 48 ring. I've not tried over 8 speeds, but with 8 you can use the entire middle ring. The 44 will more or less get you over any rolling terrain short of severe hills. I switch between the 44 and 48 to fine tune gears, the only pattern I follow is up and down on the cassette, left to right on the big rings to fine tune. The 26 is only used on big hills and when fatigued.
You can apply this to small rings, say a 34/38 or a 36/40 etc. but the smaller the rings, the less defined the gears become. That's why half-step rings are usually 44/48 and above.
To contradict myself though, as I said earlier a 39/42 would work well for you with a 11-32 9sp cassette. Do the chart here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mike.sherman/shift.html .
You can outhink the engineers though, they make what THEY THINK appeals to the masses. There's a lot of people out there on a bike, we all don't ride the same gears. Todays gearing is all copy cat, throw on as many cogs as you can and you're good to go. Me .. . I have two hands. . .I like using them both.
So, if you want to use chainrings close together, more power to you.