That is interesting. I participated in an adventure recently where my Wizard was tied up for the entirety of a 3-round combat performing a (story-specific) ritual, and it did suck: I love combat and was left out of it. I'll suggest your system to my DM for future use...
I was so impressed with Amazon's service, I cancelled my order with them and bought the PDF from Drivethru. Time from order to delivery = less than 3 minutes.
I've got the PHB1 for leaning character sheets on if short on table space, so extra hardbacks are superfluous. Also, this way I can read...