Is Lion for pre-2008 MacBook Pro really advisable?

Is Lion for pre-2008 MacBook Pro really advisable? My experience of Lion using a mid-2011 MacBook Air is very positive. I really love gestures in particular! Really many of the new features of Lion are very neat. That being said, upgrading my mid-2007 MacBook Pro (4GB RAM, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 15") triggered a sequence of events that ultimately necessitated a new hard drive at a significant cost.

Why you should think twice before upgrading to Lion if you have a pre-2008 MacBook Pro?

Firstly gestures requires an up to date touchpad. Secondly AirDrop doesn't work on machines that are that old. I am not an iWork user so Versions is not something that affects me a great deal. To boot, it now appears that Snow Leopard will support iCloud so what is the point of Lion on a pre-2008 MacBook Pro?

The machine was working find with Snow Leopard and given these machines do not come with touchpad, I would argue that upgrading to Lion was not really advisable. It ended up costing me £110 ($182) to replace the hard drive (at the Apple store because a hard drive replacement is not 'advisable' DIY on a mid-2007 MacBook Pro) and it's a well know fact that operating system upgrades 'flashes' out hard drive weaknesses. I am not saying Lion killed my hard drive but the machine would have probably happily lived if I hadn't upgraded.

NB. asking if it's 'advisable' rather than 'necessary'. I make these comments in ignorance to be perfectly honest but I thought it was worth flagging it up for anyone out there thinking about upgrading to Lion on an older machine!