Fantastic!
I'm going to write a script for a movie in which a grizzled old vet, used to doing things "the old way," is paired up with a technology-obsessed rookie.
Hilarity ensues!
Do you think it's been done before?
Kiwi Chick, we'll need someone to be The Girl in this film. Perhaps you'd be interested?
Anyway, though he sounds a bit tightly wound, I agree with Ovation that more information is better. Even if it's not officially valid, it's something. It's like reading the news -- any one source has its bias and degree of inaccuracy, but by evaluating lots of sources, you can arrive at something like truth. Having Internet access (or XM, or some other data source) in the cockpit is a very good thing. It's especially good for low-time pilots like myself who don't have the experience to make inferences and judgements based only on what we see out the window (which may not be anything, after all).
As for using the area frequency for weather now that Flightwatch is gone, I agree with Lasiorhinus that it is a valid thing to do, and I do in fact do it. I don't do it as casually as I'd retrieve a weather chart off the BOM site, though.