Hmmmm.....in here there is definitely rumbling of 'it all depends on the purpose of the bike' and I think that was what I was getting at in the first post - that norms seem to being taken from one bike class and then being put on another, without really tight application of what is needed in which class. If I had use the sizing chart given, I would have wound up with a bike which was too small. Definitely. This happened in the 90's where I was advised between two Klein Adroit frames, and ended up being recommended the small one....which was way too small, in the end. I built it up, put on the 140mm stems which were typical of the time, and boy did you have to watch ruts on the South Downs, or you were over the front bars in an instant. Pushing the saddle back on the rails just messed up the climbing ability of the frame, which went from excellent to pants. I did learn from this at the time, and went LOOOONG - so over to 15 inch Team Marins and Team Titanium Marins which had very long top tubes. I then ran much shorter stems (90-110) and was able to have in-line posts with the saddle nicely set in the middle, giving a great climbing rate, given the short rear triangle on these frames. They were really dialled and REAALLLLLY long frames - I kick myself losing the Prestige Team Marin which I had. Grrrr. Some friends who are a lot taller and running 'old geometry' bikes seem to have a really big problem, since proportionally their top tubes do not seem to grow enough as the sizes progress, and retailers push the saddle back on already heavily laid-back seat posts, and then whack a huge stem on. Which gives a really scary looking and inefficient setup.