Whether in front or back. Anything bigger than a 23 is dorky looking. A 26 is about as goofy as a compact crank and pie-plate sized mountain bike cogs with 28 or more teeth look worse than triple cranks on road bikes.

I figure that my capabilities are relevant only to me.

Winner!

Go for the compact. Absolutely no reason not to. Greg Lemond rode his legendary time trial in 1989, to this day the second fastest ever in tour history, with a 55 x 12 gear. A 50 X 11 is nearly as high. A 34 x 28 granny gear is only slightly higher than your current 30 x 25.

I made the stupid mistake of getting a 53/39. When my chainrings wear out I'll be getting a compact, even if I've stared racing.

Another option would be to go with SRAM components. Sram makes a rival (and apex) midcage RD that can accept a 12 - 32 cassette. Combine that with a compact crank, and you could power up anything. I'm pretty sure the protour guys used a similar setup in the Giro recently.

Using my wife as an example (since I haven't ridden on a triple since I had a mountain bike years ago)

She's had a triple on all her road bikes for the past 16 years. Just last December she took delivery of a new road bike with a compact double. She loves the fit & feel of the new bike immensely; it is by far her favorite bike to ride, always her first choice if there are no other mitigating circumstances

...but that preference seems to be in spite of the compact drivetrain rather than because of it.

Her triple is a 53/39/30, with a 12-27 cassette. (Compact is a 50/34 with 11-28.) On the triple she can stay in the 39-tooth chainring for vast portions of a typical ride; no incessant back&forth front shifting like the compact necessitates. And narrower gaps between cogs make for smoother (perceived) shifting.

Plus, after 16 years on a triple, her biomechanics are much more acclimated to the Q-Factor of a triple crankset, and the narrower spacing of the compact is wreaking havoc on her knees.

So there's more to the difference than just gear-inches.

Go compact. Whatever you lose in your lowest gears your body will make up for in short order. You will push yourself a little bit, but it will make you stronger. I did appreciate my compact triple for a while, but the compromise of the 34t in the double made me forget about the 30t granny ring after about five rides.

Making this change earns you 5 HTFU points as well, redeemable on hills during your local group ride.

Other than the fact that compact gearing doesn't work for everybody. If I ran a compact and used the same equivalent gears for riding as I do now, I'd have to shift down to the 34T ring every time I stopped and for just about every time the road started to point up. With the 42T inner ring on my triple, I can handle all the stop and go no problem and only need the 30T inner ring for certain extra steep climbs. Trying to use a 50T ring for most of my riding would result in a lot of unnecessary straining or a lot of extra front shifting. Now, the latter isn't necessarily bad but when it comes with the tradeoff of reduced range (for a given cassette) and more double shifting due to the larger gaps between chainrings, I have plenty of reasons not to go with a compact. YMMV.

I would not bother changing your current bike.

If you are buying a new bike, I agree you should look at the gear ratios and pick what you think will work best for your style of riding.

If it's a draw, I would choose compact over triple.

I wouldn't pull a triple to put a compact double on. I know there's a stigma about the triple which I think is ridiculous. I don't hear any bashing about bikes with a gawd awful tall headtube and compact bars with no saddle to bar drop.

Another vote for triple on the basis of the middle ring being adequate 90%+ of the time with the granny gear there just in case you need to "bail out." I'd be hopping back and forth front rings on a compact way too much, and there's situations I would miss the granny if I were to get a standard double. The stigma of triples is stupid, it may not look "pro" but for lots of people it's a great solution.

All good points in favor of the triple. This is a true YMMV thread.

well to get the 11 and go all the way to the 28 means a lot of holes in the gear range. which means a very thin selection of gears which one might be using MOST of the time, just to not have a leg breaker on the few pitches where a 32 inch gear (34/28) might be needed.

And there are no Lemonds on this list.
If you do start racing you'll find those gearing holes right quick.

no idea what your talking about. my 300 dollar hybrid with an 11-32 shifts perfectly and I can't find any holes, usualy it's the 6th cog for me.

The "Here's how it applies to you" part was the "and definitely don't consider myself a strong climber" section.

Not quite a blanket "If Ic an do it, so can you."

So, to paraphrase "strong climbers and not strong climbers can both run a 50-34//12-27, since I as a self-assessed non-strong climber can run a 50-34//12-27." Or were you saying that only super-weak climbers should run a triple?

I stand by my critique of your input. Your capabilities (and mine, for that matter) are irrelevant to everyone else in the matter of their gear selection.