You must not hike park a lot...the heel pieces are super annoying.
To answer the question about the cables on the new FKS bindings, they changed the DIN range so that you don't get as close to maxing out the DIN (instead of 12 it's now 14, 18 is still 18, but maxing that out is pretty much stupid unless you really know what you're doing), the 15s didn't have that problem, but people for some reason are more afraid of 15 DIN bindings than 14...kinda weird, but also not having a 12 DIN option helps the decision.
As far as sexy skis...how about these:
you have to pay close attention to what's going on here...