Every day offers new Surface Mount Devices that tantalize you with capabilities you can't find in through hole components. Many types of through hole devices are getting more difficult to find as time passes by because SMT is a more streamlined and profitable process for bigger manufacturers. You would like to take advantage of the newer SMD capabilities, but you may have avoided it because of the problems associated with hand soldering the leads.
You know that stencil printing your paste and reflowing your SMD assembly is the right method but until now nobody has a stencil printer or a reflow oven that is small and affordable.