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I respect your opinion and am glad to see we can keep this civil as many of these conversations go to poop quick. I will just say the following:
1. There are way too many variables, even between tire brands to say anything is absolute. All we have is our experiences and general guidelines in anything other than black/white situations. My personal experience with winter tires is that they do not perform as good as UHP all seasons in dry weather. That's all I can say about that.
2. It's very possible that winter tires have become better in the dry since I stopped using them. That being said, I've seen all seasons get much better as well. Take a look at the latest Michelin A/S 3 tires. They are testing better than many summer tires in the dry and wet. So saying summer tires are automatically better is not always true although true in many cases.
3. Having to get started up snowy hills is common in my area. In this case, AWD is extremely helpful and will be better most times than a typical RWD and winter set combo. I can always drive slow with my all seasons and never get stuck but if I had a RWD car and winters I could very well get stuck.
4. What you state about winter tire compounds is true but it is not the only thing that makes winter tires perform well in the snow and ice. That would discredit tread design. There is a large variation between winter tires so the tread design is important and is focused on snow and ice, not dry.
5. Take a look at the September issue of consumer reports where they rated different tires. In the winter tire category almost all the tires rated below average on dry handling. Not the case for snow performance of all seasons.
Anyway, this will never get resolved here. My experience tells me that AWD and all seasons is the least compromise. Many people have the same experience. To each their own.
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