[batiudrami]

It works better as a spoken language (and therefore fairly well for estimated distances), but man, does it make any kind of calculation annoying (many engineering textbooks are from the US and use imperial units - you end up with stupidity like BTU/ft^2.s.

The thing I think many people from the US don't understand about a transition is that it doesn't mean you're somehow not allowed to use imperial units anymore - in Australia it's still used regularly in spoken language (especially with regard to distances) - but anything where the number matters, the value is given in metric, so calculations can be performed simply.