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It seems that you have done the sensible thing by looking into the future and deciding that you're not going to be looking for a FF body.
I think that I'd choose the 17 - 55mm f/2.8 for a few reasons. The fast f/2.8 aperture will allow you to introduce at least some background blur, whereas f/4 won't in most situations. f/2.8 allows twice the light to reach the sensor than the f/4 so you gain an extra stop. F/2.8 is the smallest aperture to be able to make use of the more sensitive centre focus spot.
The IS system on the 17 - 55mm gives you 3 more stops advantage, plus the wider aperture means a total of four stops advantage, well worth having!
Distortion at the wide end is still apparant at 2% but on the 17 - 40mm it's worse at 2.5% the lens you currently have set a new record (at the time) at over 4% Of course this is correctable in post processing, and the difference between 2 & 2.5% is not really going to be a deal breaker, but it is just another stat in the 17 - 55mm favour.
The 17 - 55mm also easy bests the 17 -40mm in resolution, being 25% better at f/8 this usually translates as sharpness. The extra 15mm focal length is also something not to be overlooked.
The only area where the 17 - 55mm loses out is vignetting, where because it is an EF-s lens compared to an EF one it's inevitable. Of course this is correctable in post processing.
Price is another issue, at £750 the 17 -55mm is much more money that the 17 - 40mm which costs £555. If you are prepared to use Ebay then you can pick one up for a similar price.
Digital picture does a lot of reviews of Canon lenses, but it's very subjective, and I find that he does tend to wear some strongly rose tinted glasses when it comes to certain lenses, I prefer photozone.de who test the lenses objectively, and have built up a pretty comprehensive list of lenses on Canon APS-c bodies.
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