There's production, then there's production.
For a hobbyist (especially when electronics is not the primary emphasis, as the Arduino seems to include in the target audience), the Arduino Diecimilla is priced reasonably enough to assume it may in fact be used in some permanent way. A one-off that I want to keep around for a particular task isn't really production, and it isn't a prototype either.
To the original poster, I've already made the same suggestion - I think that auto-reset functionality should be user-selectable with a jumper, too.
-j