The step certainly makes Mama happy and she is the only one that uses it.  I find it easier to go off and on the leading edge.  I also had trouble with it extending for the first 100 hours, but after tweaking the pocket it sits in and greasing the mechanism, it has deployed correctly for the last year.

I have a different spin on the AC.  While it is nice, in Yakima, WA (a little hotter than Redmond in the summer), ice from September to June is a big concern.  When my two buddies that fly complex singles discovered that ice protection could be added, I have had a constant bombardment from them to get it installed.  Therefore, I did not install AC because the weight and speed penalty from both was more than I wanted to pay.  If I lived further south, my thought process would favor the AC.  Caveat:  I avoid ice like the plague.

Tomas
N993DT
LNC4