Kyle Boatright wrote:



For most of us East of the Rockies, a 200 lb increase in useful load has
more utility than a few knot increase in cruise speed, a higher ceiling (how
many of us have access to O2 systems, anyway?),


Yes to these.


and/or better short field
performance.


Definitely no to this. Useful load has no bearing whatsoever on takeoff
and climb performance. There's a lot of ground lovers out there with
some pretty good useful numbers.