Originally Posted by
chasm54
Er, that's fine, except it doesn't address the point you made in the first place, which is that you like your typical gear to be in the middle of the rear cassette. On a 12-25 cassette, the 16 and 17 sprockets are the middle two sprockets. What you now seem to be saying is that you wanted lower gearing, which is of course what a compact is for.
I think that you are so anxious to argue that you ignored my last paragraph. The unexpected benefit of not having to shift chainrings as often is the point that I was trying to make.