Audi shame shame shame on you for a sensible post !! I will disagree with the MPG, I don't think you will gain any significant increase by using dino, synthetic, or even if you twist the cap off the oil bottle while sticking out your tongue. I have tried it on several vehicles, two hondas, and various other makes/models as well, I never once seen a mileage increase by using synthetic. The oil filter is also a great pointer, as has been said if you trust the filter with an extended synthetic run, there is no reason not to trust it on a regular dino run, and this very issue made me change my ways of always changing the oil filter when changing the oil using dino, now if I run out of on sale synthetic, I run dino, and run the oil filter two OCI's. The synthetic debate really gets even harder to justify when you bring in the 5w-20 that so many cars are now spec for, the 5w-20 dyno is an outstanding oil which I assume is one of the reasons why OCI's have been getting longer, and longer, also the engines have come a long way with roller rockers etc.
I bet all in all most people spend far more running a synthetic, because from reading, and like myself when I creep up on those double digit miles I'm getting ready for an oil change (for me it's creeping up on 15k with my Honda) so I normally change out around 12k or after, with a dyno I would be more apt to run to 7500 miles.
This is my first run of Castrol GC in awhile, and I have enough synthetic to run me a year or so, after that may stop chasing the synthetic rebates, on sale oils, clearance, but then what would be the point of life ?? hahaha still dyno has it's place, and it has come further, is a better product, the you look at synthetic over the years, if anything it has been degraded by the Castrol phrasing of a synthetic, so while we all talk about how much better synthetic is, all most of us are talking up is a real word dyno like PP, many of the Castrol choices, maybe several of the Mobil oils ? (not sure about those) and some (maybe less than 10%) are using a real synthetic like Redline, Amsoil etc. It's just a different way of looking at it, all the talk about how it's very little cost to run a synthetic, and you can run it twice as long etc, when the oil is probably a hydro-cracked dino oil (not sure I have the terminology correct on hydro-cracked) and we are running 10k, 12k, even 15k on these real world, Castrol marketing so called synthetic !!! (which is really a dyno)