I agree you can not under estimate the importance of an good dink, But disagree about value of an small motor. We run the 9.8 as you and agree about all your pro comments but we also have an 2.5 that weighs about 25 lb that we use about half of the time. Since we take the motor off any time we move the boat. The light motor we can one hand getting it on/off the dink, It is used a in a anchorage that we may only want to go to the beach or do a little exploring. I think you summed it up with it depends about style as to what will keep them happy.
Something I have not seen mentioned yet in this thread is more dink seem to be going missing at night so most are now raised out of the water at night.