I used to ride with obscene amounts of drop in the bars....when I measured it before I started working on raising the bars, I had a 5.5" drop from the top of the bars to the top of the saddle. Oddly enough the geometry of the bike allowed for this, and it was fast as hell....seriously....headwinds meant nothing when that aero.

Downside, no matter what I did, my hands hurt like hell at the end of the day...and having my head as far back as it can, while good for opening the throat for better breathing, was not all the comfortable for anything more than 30mi.

So now, I am working on getting the bars close to level myself....it was at 3.9" last time, but that was as high as they could go...so time for a new fork so i can get them up to the 1.5" drop i desire.

Thing is, a slightly lower bar is desireable if you plan on sport riding...but if you are primarily a utility cyclist, you want seat level, or possibly a tad higher.