Exactly. Coinbase seems more and more like a starter science kit -- I used them to buy my first 10 bitcoins because it was easy, then realizing how hard it was to buy more at certain times, and not being able to keep money in your Coinbase account (all transactions get drawn from your bank account and take X days to clear before you can actually do anything with your BTC and when you sell BTC they get deposited into your bank account) took its toll. I now deal solely with the exchanges (MtGox, CampBX, BTC-E) - it's so much easier, and I think people also fail to realize there's a markup with using coinbase too.