Being a devil's advocate means that you just oppose something for the sake of argument. You will find many such people here on HN. Keep reading comments on HN and you will get all the first hand information you need.
Go for the pro version. IMO, it's much better for the kind of work you note. I see that you used the last one for 8 years. Considering that, even if pro is costlier, that difference in amount will not be visible or relevant for such long usage. If you were going to replace it every year or two or every time a new version is released, then the cost difference becomes a factor.
Good. latency has always been a problem at LinkedIn. for me, as a recruiter, I want to send friend requests and job vacancy to a bunch of random users in the blink of an eye. This helps. Thank you LinkedIn.