Originally Posted by interested
5. A lot of people seem to base their derailleur experience on incredible cheap $5 stamped derailleur on shoddy old bikes, with dodgy thumb shifters and noodle cables. Hardly fair to compare that to a $200 gear hub. People really don't seem to say; "I tried a Shimano Ultegra hub with a 105 derailleur and a SRAM PG cassette (total price roughly same price as a Nexus 8 hub) but preferred the shifting action/rolling resistance/etc of my internal gears."
Where are you pricing the internal hub bikes? At that same LBS where you are getting your maintenance recommendations?
Last Sachs/SRAM Spectro 7 fully equipped bike I bought in Germany was in 2002. Cost about €500 complete (about $450 at the time). Zero Seven Girls Bike is pictured below.
Also bought two years previously my current commuter Sachs/SRAM Spectro 7 fully equipped Raggazzi bike for DM 268 (about $135) at the time. The price was so cheap that I bought a matching girl's model for the same price. That is the bike my daughter now uses in Philadelphia.
My experience in Europe has been that the internally geared commuter bikes were almost always cheaper than a "flashy" lightweight bike which may or may not be equipped for commuting. This was also true back in the US when Raleigh, Schwinn and others regularly sold 3 speed bikes with fenders and chainguard cheaper than any 10 speed offered at the time (early to mid 70's). The marketers solution was to remove those inexpensive bikes from the product mix.