I'd have to agree with you on that one - I think a lot of people overestimate the importance of barrier draw and hence you can often get good value bets in the outer barriers (because some people wont bet on it if it is outside say barrier 8 or so). If you are going to consider barrier draw then you MUST look at the layout of the particular track, specifically how far is it from the start point to the first corner - on many track/distance combinations you have quite a long straight before the first corner and this makes barrier position much less important. Also the longer the race the less important the barrier position (in my opinion anyway).

Personally I pretty much ignore barrier position and look for the best value horses - if it is drawn wide you will probably get better odds and it will pay better when it wins!