I went with v-brakes on my recent cyclocross bike instead of cantilevers and so far like the results. I was happy with the tektro cr-720 wide profile cantilevers I had on the front of my last cyclocross bike but with this new bike and a lighter Ritchey WCS fork, I wanted to skip any possibility of fork chatter and so went with v-brakes.

V-brakes are now available in a variety of different arm lengths. So instead of changing brake lever types to suit the V-brake, you can now just chose the appropriate sized v-brake to go with the brake levers you wish to use.

Full size V-brakes (over 100mm) as found on most mountain/hybrid bikes:
• either use a road lever like the RL520
• or use standard road levers and a "travel agent" pulley adapter to correct the cable pull amount

Mini-V brakes in the 90-95mm range (like the fancy new TRP CX-9):
• Work with standard road levers without travel agent adapter as the "noodle"
• The latest shimano levers pull a bit more cable so this size V-brake is a good match for those levers, but can be made to work with older Shimano or SRAM or Campy but the pads will need to be set a little closer to the rim to start with

Mini-V brakes in the 80-85mm range:
• Work with standard road levers without travel agent adapter as the "noodle"
• Popular with some european cyclocross racers, paired with campagnolo levers
• Sets up with a bit more pad clearance than the 90-95mm length v-brake arms

Now, you can use the mini-v's with travel agents, too, and then be able to set your pads up really far away from the rim. This may come in handy if you ride in thick mud or wheels go out of true a lot, but for typical daily use for me I've found the amount of pad clearance fine without the travel agent noodle.

Here is my bike with Campagnolo levers and the 85mm Tektro RX-5 brakes, and 28mm tires. As you can see, there is still plenty of room for much larger tires:





You will notice that I'm using a "noodle" with adjustability. This may be necessary with Shimano/Sram levers because you'll need to set the pads up pretty close to the rim and may not have enough slack left to release the noodle to open up the brakes for wheel removal. With the adjustable noodles you can back off the brakes easily enough to release them and also can back them off if your wheel goes out of true and starts rubbing. I use Campy levers that have a quick release built into the lever itself so these noodles really weren't necessary for me but I put them on anyway.