MySQL vs Sybase IQ

In my new role, I am playing around with mysql for managing our data, which is not very huge per se, but since we are running our db on tiny hosts (2GB memory etc), the performance tuning requirement is significant.
Now, being a former Sybase IQ developer, I cannot help but compare Sybase IQ with MySQL. Some of these comparison points are also inherent differences between a row-based and a column-based DBMS (column-based dbs rule!!), and I do not claim to be unbiased :) Being a amateur in MySQL, I might be missing some better ways in MySQL, feel free to point out!

1. In a row based DB, it's always a compromise between wide tables (and hence huge IO cost), and expensive joins.
We want to store de-normalized data in our datawarehouse tables, to accelerate our query performance. But that makes the table very wide, making the queries slow due to huge IO in even querying a few columns. While, if we break the table, we end of joining them while querying, again expensive. Column-based Sybase IQ is an answer!

2. In MySQL, your query will use only one index per table in a query!
Probably, this is something obvious for a row based DB, but it came as a shock to me. Being used to Sybase IQ way of using indexes, I was happily creating individual indexes on columns assuming that the query will use all that are required. (IQ gets found-sets using multiple indexes and use them for reducing selected sets). But MySQL does not do that. Result: my table has something like 6 indexes with various combinations of 3 columns, while all I would have need in IQ would be 3.

3. Mysql writers block readers.
We use INNODB, which claims to have row level locking. Also the mysql documentation says that if you are using a repeatable read isolation level, your reading transaction will work on a snapshot of data. But I never saw that in action. There are numerous "special cases" where INNODB takes a table-level lock for writing (auto-inc columns, probably duplicate key update), which ends up into the query getting blocked, waiting on lock to be released. IQ has "snapshot-versioning", not "locking", which means your readers will "never" be blocked on writers, unless you explicitly say so by locking table.

4. Mysql backup is great.
I can say that mysql is better than probably any other dbms in one thing. Simplicity. You can backup, migrate mysql dbs very easily by using mysqldump. IQ's backup procedure was confusing, even for me as a developer.