>Doorknobs are a PITA if your hands are full (or filthy because you've just been doing something messy/oily etc). Also not good when the children where small when the doors had the knob relatively high up and there was no lever to reach up on tiptoe to pull down.

Exactly the reasons (except kids, they were big already) why the first thing we did when we bought a fixer-upper was to ditch the doorknobs on outside doors and replace them with handles. Saved us a lot of backbone when moving in and carrying tools etc.