I like being able to change my avatar in one place (Gravatar) and have the same avatar across multiple sites. That way I don't have to change my avatar on a per-site basis. I'm not sure what pain point you're referring to with it being tied to the email address. That's supposed to be the benefit of Gravatar.
Enabled. And I meant that some websites have a very poor gravatar implementation. Sorry if it was confusing.