Sure, but the (real or imaginary) savings of this is not about your hit, is about the hit from the server point of view.

I'm not sure I want someone working on a front-end component trying to optimize for a back-end process without realizing the full impact of these front-end changes. I'm assuming/hoping in this case it's just a "hey, this is something fun I did."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the combined size of an image and its complementary CSS file is less than the size of a 129kb CSS file with "CSS3 images", then don't you essentially lose the benefit of reducing server load?

Sure. That's why I added the "imaginary" qualifier to the savings.

I just wanted to clarify that the savings the other commenters talk about were taken from the server point of you.