The other option would be to change the block time to 2 minutes.
I'm not sure why that wasn't discussed more.
Because that will cause more frequent orphan blocks. It has been said in this kind of threads before.
I'd like to see an estimated % of increased orphan blocks at 2 minutes. Then weigh that against the inconveniences that will arise from 20 Mb blocks. Pretty sure a "slightly" higher increase in orphans would be preferable. Still, I'm sure Gavin and co have their reasons.
Why don't you try running p2pool with their 30 second blocks? P2pool blocks (or shares) are essentially lower difficulty Bitcoin blocks used to measure your mining contribution. If you have a slightly slower connection than the other p2pool miners it is not uncommon for 50% of your blocks to get orphaned. Now 2 minutes is not as bad as 30 seconds, but you should not assume that the number of orphans would be insignificant.