I am fairly new to cycling and have just been on a few short weekend trips so take this with a grain of salt but in the several months that I read about the LHT I heard the words "tank" and "heavy" so many times that I was almost losing interest. When I actually rode the bike I was shocked at how great and non-tank-like it felt. Other than being a smoother ride it didn't feel that much different from my road bike. There's a post in an ACA thread where a guy did his best to compare the speed of his road bike to his LHT and the results were exactly the same. Some may dispute this but my point is that as a commuter and light tourer I don't think you are going to notice all that much. You didn't mention that speed is a concern but since these adjectives come up again and again I wanted to give you a newbies perspective.