Can Someone Explain Why Acronis Uses Automatic Consolidation For File Management

Ok,

I am a new ATI 2010 user.  I bought a new Windows 7 computer, and decided to change from Norton Ghost to ATI 2010.  In Norton Ghost, you specified how many "sets" of backups to keep and the amount of time before creating a new set.  The backup files were I think named something like:

mybackup[set #]i[increment #] (mybackup001i01)

The North Ghost method made sense to me and it was easy to follow.  ATI on the other hand has implement automatic consolidation, which seems pretty comparable at first.  Then I started to read and:

1. My computer will take longer to do backups since it now has to consolidate files together

2. ATI is physically changing the backup files

Point #2 really bothers me.  I have read the manual, and many times it states to validate the backups to ensure integrity in both Windows and the recovery environment.  Why would Acronis implement a file management system that actually modifies the backups and puts them at more risk of corruption?  I find it a totally unacceptable method for file management; I do not want older backups modified one bit after they are created.  It also seems way harder to program automatic consolidation versus just using a set number index and deleting old sets.

For now, I am going to use chain2gen.  It really bothers me as a user of this program that I have to resort to editing BAT files to have the program meet the 2nd most important requirement of backup software.  chain2gen works, but it still took me a bunch of hours to get it running (much thanks deserved for the author of this program).

Is my thought process way off target, and most everyone else is satisfied with automatic consolidation?  Perhaps I am just a grouchy new user used to another program?  I am trying to say that I consider automatic consolidation unacceptable and Acronis will lose me as a customer if they cannot develop a GUI system for managing "sets" of backup data.