[GeoffR]

If you're not sure about the hinting the best thing is just to try the font with and without hints and see which looks better to you.

I haven't yet found a font that looks better with hinting, but I have found some that look much much better without hinting. Edit: For most of them the hinting has no noticable effect one way or the other, so I might as well remove the hinting to save some memory.