Lazy I/O *sounds* safe. And most of the alternatives (like conduits) hurt my head, so it is really *really* tempting to stay with lazy I/O and think I'm doing something safe.
Well, conduit was created for the sake of a web framework. I think all web frameworks, in whatever language, are quite complex, with a steep learning curve. As to alternatives -- this is may be the issue of familiarity or the availability of a nice library of combinators. Here is the example from my FLOPS talk: count the number of words "the" in a file. Lazy IO: run_countTHEL fname = readFile fname >>= print . length . filter (=="the") . words Iteratee IO: run_countTHEI fname = print =<< fileL fname >$< wordsL >$< filterL (=="the") >$< count_i The same structure of computation and the same size (and the same incrementality). But there is even a simple way (when it applies): generators. All languages that tried generators so far (starying from CLU and Icon) have used them to great success.
Derek Lowe has a list of "Things I Won't Work With". http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/ This is a really fun site indeed.