Greatest bike upgrade in the last 25 years
 

The other day I'm riding up a hill and I'm thinking how nice it is to not have to reach down to shift and how nice this light bike felt going up hill and how my feet didn't hurt from having them strapped in cages and how if I fell over my head would be protected from this light helmet. For me I'm going to go with index shifting on the handle bars.

index shifting is great, but pedals make ti easy to get in or out at anytime, and thye avoid sore knees with float. They are a comfort and safety upgrade.

I like 'em both.

The new wireless groupos will be great too, when they are de rigeur.

Just limiting the poll to road bikes, huh? Even if you included mountain bike components such as disc brakes, suspension forks, and rear shocks, I'd still probably pick index shifting. Trying to work a friction shift with one hand off the handlebars on technical singletrack would be pretty scary.

Didn't shiamno have friction thumb shifters? I am pretty sure they and Suntour had them. In fact, I think one of the many bikes in my garage has them on the handlebars. Plus, firciton shifting isn't so bad. Once you got to know your bike well, you could almost always hit the gear without messing around much, if at all.

Their was kinda an art to it. I don't think index shifting made a big difference to the better riders but it was a little bit of heaven to the beginning rider.

I don't know anything about the evolution of shifters in early mountain biking. When I got into mountain biking a dozen years ago, my bike had the grip-shift indexed twist shifters. I guess if I had to use a friction shift back then, I probably would have given up. Or maybe just set a gear at the start of a technical climb and never changed it until I hit the top. Practically like riding a fixie?

Come to think of it, there are a lot of climbs where I just stay in one gear from bottom to top, but there are plenty of others where it's nice to have fast, accurate shifts.

I have ot agree, on mtb click shifting is more important than clipless pedals. RC's point about click shifting being good for beginners is also valid. Even so, being old and stubborn, I do nto change my vote (I know that click shifting is nto really hte same as index shifting, but it is easier to type, which ease is wiped out by this parentethtical comment; I am a mess)