Nerding around with lead

I use mechanical pencils. I've used them since I was in school. I have found that I just don't like the sloppy nature inherent in a traditional wood pencil. When you finally have a nice, sharp point on your wood pencil, you use it, it works well and then by the end of a few lines of notes...it's dull. You can no longer go a superscript items into your notes because it's too dull to use that way. Mechanical pencils allow you to always have a sharp point and have consistent character size throughout a page of notes. Yes to you who think I am completely insane! Consistent character size is important in my structured nerd world!

This comes up because I was looking for a new mechanical pencil today and the options have changed. When I was in high school, there were three pencils you could purchase. The 0.3mm version was a tiny little lead that broke easily but gave a fantastically crisp line. I didn't use many of those because I tended to break them. The 0.5mm version was my favorite as it was a nice compromise between the larger 0.7mm version which was just too thick for me and the 0.3mm cat whisker version that I broke all the time.

That seems to have ended these days.

At the office supply store, I found 0.5mm, 0.7mm and a hugely icky 0.9mm version! I mean you might as well try to write with a felt-tip marker as use a 0.9mm pencil lead! It's humongous! I was happy that my favorite 0.5mm was still available, but what's with the huge lead being so popular any more? Are people just so used to writing with styli that they need the gunga lead?