I also noticed that a large big ring is essentially useless with the top 50% of a standard cassette... every gear is too damn tall. To overcome this I custom built my own 8 speed cassette which is 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 34 and a 48-36-26 crankset (going to replace the 26 with a 22 when I get around to it). This 'moves up' the more useful gears to the middle of the cassette where all three chainrings can reach them. It also has the benefit of roughly 10% jumps between cogs except for the very top gear (7%) and lowest gear (34%). I am very pleased with the outcome of this setup. In order to make it happen I used a 13-26, took off the 13, 14T, put on a 14T first position cog (sheldon did this using the original 13T first position cog, but I found that the shifting sucked from 13-15, much smoother 14-15) and took a 34T from a megarange cassette and slid it on to the back for a 'bailout' gear. Anyways... no need for half step gearing in this setup. 48/14 gearing is plenty fast for me.