I can live without the preferred seating and most (but not all) of the time my upgrades on NW have been handled fairly well and efficiently. The place where I've really had a huge pain is using CO rewards to upgrade NW intl flights. I don't even want to go into what a pain it is.

RichG, why do you suggest that flying 757s makes your upgrade chances good? My experience is that the 757s have a much lower ratio of first/coach than most of the DC9s.