Marginally? Have you ever heard of IE6? The requirement that nearly everyone, many of whom don't know what a browser is, update theirs before most serious websites can use new features makes the positive impact of autoupdates much more than marginal.
What "new features" exactly, and how do they have a "positive impact" on the end user?
I disagree with the sentiment that somehow using new features is obligatory and directly related with how much "better" a website is; in fact the most informative and most visited sites I use, are also the ones that tend to be the oldest and not use any of these new features- often hand-written HTML4 or even 3.2.
> What "new features" exactly, and how do they have a "positive impact" on the end user?
You've got to be joking? Even if it's true that you mostly use websites that don't make use of new features, then you are extremely unrepresentative. Anyway, even simple content-driven sites like Wikipedia make use of a lot of HTML5 stuff now in ways that aren't necessarily obvious to users. And although much of that stuff could theoretically be made to work in older browsers, it's not viable to do that because it would be prohibitively expensive to maintain. So not as much good stuff could get built. That's how end users benefit.
1. Better usability through a more well-defined standard.
2. Geolocation, allowing for localized data.
3. Video support without basically needing Flash or obtuse browser plugins.
4. Better cross-browser support. Users use a variety of browsers these days. Being able to support more than one browser is essential.
5. Offline/local cache, which improves performance and usability. Lose your power while typing in your comment? Still there when you get back!
6. Improved performance allowing for more performant applications.
But the real problem is this:
> in fact the most informative and most visited sites I use
You are mistaking yourself for the majority. Therefore, the reality is, none of the above will be "better" as defined by you. However, if what you are saying is true, then any site of yours using HTML 3.2 would be a better site as a result of using HTML5, as it's more semantic in nature, and as a result, provides better support for providing usability and accessibility.
You are free to disagree, of course, but you'd be wrong because your reasons are not 'better' than mine.
Part of it is that many of the new features are much more useful for 'web applications', as opposed to simple webpages. Whether or not grandparent finds such applications useful or that they are worth the increased browser complexity, it seems clear from usage statistics (e.g. of Google's suite) that many people do.
