My commuter is a hardtail mountain bike with front suspension. The only road speciffic changes I've made to it are putting on fat semi-slick tires, 2.1 Continental Town & Country and a fair amount of 3M reflective tape. I like this set-up for it's ruggedness and versitility. Yes, my commute is entirely on pavement, but that also includes train tracks, broken concrete, curbs and a lot of stop lights. I figure that since the local Bike Patrol Police use/used essentially the same set-up, it will work just as well for me. Also with this set-up, I have a second set of wheels with knobby tires already mounted, so when I want to hit some good single track all I have to do is take a minute to swap out the wheels.