Would You Ditch Your MacBook's Optical Drive For A Speed+Battery Boost?

My esteemed colleague John Brownlee wrote earlier today about the excellent article at Ars Technica which explains in detail why the new 13″ MacBook Pro doesn't have a speedy i5 or i7 chip, while its bigger brothers and sisters do.
What interests me more, though, is the discussion that follows the Ars article.

Since the article [...:]