Trying to take all the relies into account .. [MENTION=468352]GrainBrain[/MENTION] ... I use the large chainring for virtually all of our ride ...... at the moment ... it's pretty flat and on the road am mainly mid cassette but we do some gravel which is quite "sinky" with a slight incline and kills any speed and this is where I use the larger cogs on the cassette .... there's the occasional part where I go to the smaller chainring and once in a while switching over is absolutely fine.

That said in the summer (before I bought this bike) our rides started going a lot further and we started taking in some steep hills which is where the bigger cogs would be used with the smaller chainring so wouldn't want to reduce that option at all.

Longer term I wonder if pushing the rear cassette up to a 36 and also going smaller on the front may be the answer to like either a 46 or 44 and a 30 or possibly even smaller if that's possible.

My 29er was running a 39/27 front and 12/36 rear .... I used the large chainring for about 95% of our rides pretty much mid range for most of it and only going to the small front ring when we were in hilly terrain and very seldom using the highest gear combination so would err to getting closer to that but not quite so extreme to lose all the benefits of more road orientated gearing.
[MENTION=21724]cyccommute[/MENTION] .... cheers for the link as well I'll have a look at that a bit later!!!!