Fair point re. winter tyres; when I've been in Austria and Norway during the Winter I note that the local Beemers, Mercs and Lexs don't appear to have any problems, although it's also fair to say that the authorities there do a much better job on snow clearance than those in Scotland where a heavy fall always causes chaos!
As I've said though, it's normally only bad enough here to cause problems for a few days a year so it's hard to justify a set of Winter tyres.
Re. the snow control, while it does drop the revs, I have to say that, to me, this made no noticeable difference today to the driveability of the car.