Originally Posted by Trogon
My sole piece of advice - spend some time looking closely at the gear combos you ride now and compare the ratios to where they would fall with a compact set-up. It may be that you end up on the outer edges of everything like I did and thus need to make some compromises.
Absolutely agree! What does it matter what gears anybody else uses or likes? Most new road bikes come with a Lance Armstrong gear set. How much sense does that make for a guy like me? I got myself a 50/34 crankset and found that I can now do most of my riding using the middle cogs of the cassette. I love it!
Like Trogon said, try to figure out what gears you need. Once you do that, your gear train choices will probably sort themselves out very quickly.