There's one thing I forgot to mention, that haven't seen addressed in anyones' posts. But it was a factor in my switching to single speed and traditional cassette and derailleur set-ups.

Internal hubs are charming and might be the ideal application for some folks. But sooner, or, most likely much later, they will need to be worked on. And I've failed to find a bike shop that wouldn't rather have you walk in dressed in a postal uniform waiving a shotgun, than holding an internally geared hub that needed to be torn down.

I like to do my own mainenance whenever possible. To that end, I downloaded the teardown and reassembly instructions from Sram's website. And Kudos to Sram for making that info accessible to us mere mortals. But the instructions were pretty intense, and you'd also need to order a couple specialized tools from them.

So in the end I shyed away from the hub because it had developed some play I found I couldn't adjust away without tearing the thing apart. So in comparison, though tradititional cassette and derailleur set-ups might need to be worked on more often, they are much easier to work on in the first place.

DanO