I've always used the newer syntax as it made things obvious and clear to me...  I suppose if I had grown up using the old syntax I might think differently - but I also shudder to think of the difficulties I would've found trying to express what I needed in a query using the old syntax when the new syntax is just so easy and straightforward to both write, debug and explain to others.  Yay for new syntax - or, as far as I was concerned, the only syntax anyway