Just registered on the site to contribute to this thread. First off, I want to say I absolutely love Industrial Craft 2! Minecraft had been gathering some dust lately and it got me back into the game big time. I haven't played around with Buildcraft much yet, which I know is a separate team, but from what I've played around with it's not as interesting.
Lately I've been playing on a SMP that I started with a friend. I've been using the Miner extensively and I find the portability of the device to be a problem. Unlike other machines that remain mostly stationary, the Miner is of no use if it remains in one spot too long. As such I find that I'm forced to either expend large quantities of fiber cable to keep EU losses down, or make a number of batboxes and use copper cabling, or I have to use my current setup which involves moving multiple Geotermnal Generators or a small portable Nuclear Reactor for power. Well, the Nuclear Reactor was working well...until I had a wrench failure today which was incredibly frustrating.
Thats why I would support Miners allowing Lapatron crystals. I don't see this being game breaking or anything, either way you have to generate the necessary power for the devices or to charge the crystal. The crystal just helps cut back on unnecessary lengths of cable or wrench failures. If there was a wrench that didn't have failures, I probably wouldn't be concerned at all.