My fear with them is how well they hold up. I am one that uses a foot throttle a lot I set a gear and min rpm mainly for hydraulic speed and use foot throttle to control speed during project. Unless it is something that requires pto speed then I just set and go. I do use a disk and ground drive rakes. I have seen on here that they are not good in ground engaging uses. Why?
I use my MF pretty much the way you describe (it's a gear tranny). I set the throttle for min RPM, and then use the foot throttle as I work (except when using the PTO speed).
I think TSO nailed it on the issue with hydro. It's mostly the loss of HP that people dislike, not that it doesn't work well with ground engaging implements. My LS has 47hp and only 38.5hp at the PTO. My MF has 48hp, but 45hp at the PTO. In some situations, that extra 7hp at the PTO might make a difference. If you're working a large field with a tiller, the hydro really doesn't help you any...you're setting the RPM, picking a gear, and pretty much leaving it there. If you're doing loader work, it's a big difference in efficiency.
I have one of each, and I'm glad I have both, but there are a lot of times when I can see the utility of the HST...even brush hogging, or mowing....you can back up that little bit to catch an area you missed, etc. With a gear setup, that's just too much trouble, so you wind up making another pass, or partial pass to get it, and that wastes some time. Still, if my neighbor gets one of his tractors really stuck, I'm getting my MF with that extra power and R-1s on it to pull him out.
Then again, I'm pretty sure I could justify having 5 or 6 tractors all set up slightly differently
