Generally, I try to stay away from having an opinion on other divers gear, especially when they are far more expierenced than I am.
I believe that the configuration of YOUR gear is YOUR business, with some consideration to your buddy.
If your diving with someone at your experience level and is comfortable with your setup on OW dives, then enjoy your dives. I dive occasionally with the local dive club (most members have been diving 20+ years) and they dive with very little redundancy. No BC's (relying on drysuit), no octo's, nice simple rigs. Who am I to have an opinion on their configuration. On Sunday my buddy and I were at 135', and one of the good old boys (diving 30yrs) went by to whatever depth with one of these rigs, we were impressed with how clean he looked on the way by.
I also dive with newly OW certs (or am in the water with them) most weekends. Listening to them breathe underwater, I have the opinion that they would not be able to buddy breathe with another diver properly, as they are breathing to hard to give up an air source in a buddy breathing situation. I have had one OOA situation with a fellow DM candidate (he had a reg malfunction) at 120'. We were on our decent to a wall in current and cold water (46F). He grabbed my fin and walked up my body until he found my wreck hose (octo) and started breathing off of it. It took a few moments for him to catch his breathe as he had been holding it for a while. If we were trying to buddy breathe i would have been holding my breathe for quite a while waiting for him to recover from having no air. By having a extra regulator on we were able to manage the situation comfortably. In this situation it was definatly benefical to have an extra air source.
My point is: Your configuration is your configuration Find a buddy that dives the same way, and ignore the rest of us.
Compare safety with driving a car for instance.
Try to look it at a bigger scale. The more safety you can add, the les casualties you have globaly. Not every driver is a F1 driver as not every recreational diver is a diver from the navy. So the more safety you can add on every occasion you would safe lives. This counts not only for diving but for everything. :cool2: