Nicodemus

tires: The borough XC tire that comes with the example I gave is a decent bet. Smooth enough for road riding but with treads for trail riding as well.

Tires are pretty personal, and depend heavily on how much of what types of riding you'll do. There's a whole range, I wouldn't know where to begin. But again, you seem best with something in between. You may even evenutally want to have two wheelsets, one with slicks and one with all-out MTB knobblies.

I personally don't consider any bike with swept back bars good for off-roading. That just seems weird. You need to be able to stand up sometimes, and those don't handle that well.

The Trek 7500 looks a bit odd, I must admit. I won't pick over the details, but yeah that doesn't really seem like the ticket. It looks like one of those hybrid concoctions that just gets most things wrong enough for the whole thing to not work well.

Funny they didn't show you the next model up, the 7700, as that looks like a more suitable design. Maybe it's too pricey.

I'd recommend having a quick shooftie through the big websites (Giant, Trek, Stevens, Specialized, etc etc). Then you'll have a better idea of what you're looking for. I expect there's 1-2 bikes of the style you want, in your price range, from each manufacturer.

Then you can hunt them down at the shops and try them out (and hopefully find a seller who's not going to try and convince you that some swept-bar "comfort" bike will be good for trail riding).

Sorry I can't throw other links at you, the Trek site exhausted my patience (I just started a separate rant thread because of it). But I trust that others will chime in with more recommendations.

I ride exclusively on roads, and I'm happy with my Sirrus. If you can find a Specialized dealer in your area, you could at least give that Crossroads and some others a try.