Most bike shops nowadays are not at all retro friendly. There are many great niche stores like Harris Cyclery or Yellow Jersey/Cycle Art that do a wonderful job of keeping bicycles on the road.

The bike store is a corporate lobby of product placement. Your old Bianchi is not as good as new because its simply old. Your LBS is stupid and you should not give them a cent. Buy everything from the internet. You don't have to feel guilty because mom and pop internet outlets do it better for less.

Buy yourself a couple hundred worth of tools and you'll be good to go. Components have gotten progressively better but not by a huge margin.

A high quality machined bottom bracket spindle with loose bearings can be very light and reliable. Brakes have improved somewhat. In the future I think we'll see more disc brake setups on road machines.

The integrated shifting is a nice luxury but it is just that...Friction shifting takes more time, its not easy to access but flicking a lever up a fraction of centimeter to get a dead quiet chain is nice for me...It works and I don't care about riding on the hoods and shifting.

The only thing better about new stuff is the ease of parts replacement. But even that can be a PIA. Campy seems to want to change spline patterns more frequently than Shimano. If you are using old 8 speed then you might have problems finding stuff. Other than that your bike shop is full of BS.