Nope. The interface was OK, but the bearing life was severely reduced due to the tiny l'il bearings. This is especially true for rougher use, such as one would expect to occur with an xtr-equipped moutain bike. You may disagree, but the interwebs is littered with threads about how/why octalink (and the camaro to octalink's mustang, ISIS) sucks so bad. Especially for MTBs, but even roadies would regular toast those lilliputian bearings.

My gripe with octalink goes beyond weak bearings, though. It was a poor design, and it was born at least in part of schemes to dominate the marketplace via planned obsolescence and petty compatibility wars. Shimano came up with it, refused to license it, and that's how the equally lousy ISIS came to be: most of the other manufacturers came up with their own splined interface, complete with tiny bearings destined to die before their time. The market spoke up pretty quick on this one, with many cyclists "downgrading" their new bikes to square taper.

In what was (hopefully) the last act of octalink evil, Shimano decided to introduce Octalink V2. While this was ostensibly for MTBs, it actually found its way onto lower-end road groups, and the "best" octalink mtb group was xtr with v1. Seems to me that the biggest "accomplishment" that shimano achieved with having v1 and v2 octalink was to reduce cross-compatibility even further. Way to go, shimano.

But, you don't have to take my word for it. Look around: where are the octalink/ISIS adherents? There aren't any. Square taper has been "obsolete" for ages, but you can still find ST BB's in a dizzying array of configurations. But most everyone has abandoned octalink; you can't buy new-production shimano V1s, and they only make truly craptastic v2 BBs currently. SKF is still making ISIS-interface BBs, but everyone else has quit 'em. (You can get a howitzer, but these have external oversized bearings.) The world has turned; they kept the good part (splined interface) but ditched the bad part (shriveled little bearings.) Personally, I'm grateful for that.