Personally I'd be very wary of that. As I said on another comment, this is a planned two-year mission. So if they drop-in a compatible component and later found out there was a manufacturing problem that shortens its life, that's not acceptable. I think NASA's very failure-avoidant, and I really can't blame them, because their mistakes are extremely expensive and occasionally deadly.
The alternative they chose, it sounds like, was extreme caution, using well-tested components at the possible expense of image quality. It's Good Enough.
And like others have said, macroscopic images aren't the sole or even primary purpose of this mission. At this point, it's just whiz-bang PR, since Spirit and Opportunity got enough pictures to last a lifetime. The secret sauce here is the spectrum analyzers, close-up camera, rock-vaporizing laser, etc. THAT'S the important stuff, scientifically.
The alternative they chose, it sounds like, was extreme caution, using well-tested components at the possible expense of image quality. It's Good Enough.
And like others have said, macroscopic images aren't the sole or even primary purpose of this mission. At this point, it's just whiz-bang PR, since Spirit and Opportunity got enough pictures to last a lifetime. The secret sauce here is the spectrum analyzers, close-up camera, rock-vaporizing laser, etc. THAT'S the important stuff, scientifically.