You gain a little reliability by getting rid of the points with their little wear block sliding over the 4 lobed cam in the distributor. As soon as you set the point gap and timing, that starts wearing and decreasing the gap and changing the timing. With an optical sensor you set it once, and if you check it again 10K miles later it is still in the same place.

Somehwere along the line between a bone stock B18 and the pepped up 2.2 liter motor I have now the stock ignition system fell behind, and I started to get a sort of wavering weak feeling to the motor at full throttle and higher rpms. I would have sworn it was a fuel supply issue, but it was completely solved with the installation of an Allison (now Crane) optical ignition system and a more powerful coil. Now it pulls clean, crisp, and hard up to 7000 rpm (as fast as I want to spin the stock bottom end).
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I'm JohnMc, and I approved this message.