I'm the same here, I prefer the straight ep look too, I figure one day I'll
will have added the 7mm & 5mm to my collection so I can toss the barlow
away from the visual part of the hobby. On clear nights the 3.5mm still
performs slighty better than the 10mm barlowed x2. I put this down to
adding the barlow, which is a Meade x2 #140 apo. It changes the
characteristics of my premium ep's (only very slightly) yet it enhances
my U/O HD's and even more so the crappy chinese whatevers that
came with my scope.

However I will get a 5x powermate at sometime... I think my planetary
imaging would benifit not having to double up barlows to get decent
planetary magnification, and less glass elements to focus and image
through. However if you are like me and you main ep's are like 14mm,
10mm, 7mm & 5mm a 2.5x barlow is going to be better to offset the
ranges of magnification where a 2x would be rather pointless. So if you
plan to fill in the missin FL's later on you may not want to spend up
large on a barlow that is temporily doing that job.

A 4x or 5x is going to be pointless or seldom used on upper mid to high
power ep's too.

So Matt, This is why I asked what FL's you have.

Regards,CS