I think the current evaluation setup is more like going to the car dealer, asking for a test drive, and then being allowed to drive the 1995 model, which lack the features that you wanted to explore, accompanied by a sales person or by yourself. Frankly, the last few times I purchased a car, I was allowed to drive it for as long as i wished, over the weekend, or whatever, alone. It was, of course, my fourth one of that same car, albeit a different model year each time. I wanted to establish that it could still pull that 6.5% grade at the posted speed limit with the air conditioner running and using the cruise control, etc. I'd have been disappointed if I'd been given a car to test drive that lacked the A/C and the cruise control. The new convenience features were also interesting to explore. If they hadn't been there, I'd probably not have purchased the car.

In each case in which I've considered using one or another compiler, I've found that what I needed to know, e.g. how well it handled table lookups, how quickly it would perform a specific operation involving tables and I/O, it was immediately obvious that the eval package wouldn't shed any light, so I skipped it, choosing ASM instead.

RE