I suspect this is one of those debates where every manufacturer will come up with some manner of logic to defend his proprietary product.
The fact is, you couldn't really have addressable detectors untill the microchip revolution came along. Sure, there were some attempts - but more than one head tripped, the coded signals became gibberish. Mind you, we really didn't have reliable electronics untill the 80's.
EOL's were a great innovation, one that -for the first time - allowed you to detect a problem.
Which to use probably depends on whose equipment you sell - though it's pretty much a design issue. A system gets large and complex enough, the EOL systems are too limited.
