Yep, i know Gurnisson. I played an 1h/shield-xbow hybrid a while before, and didn't do too bad with it.
But the way it is now, playing an archer is playing a constant fear character, and i always get trumpled by cav. At least, with xbows, the time you take to reload can be spent effectively to look across you. Xbows don't have tunnel vision, contrary for mid archers, wich helps a lot.
And... i believe i can make cav fear me more if i use an xbow than a bow. I may be wrong though, we'll see that in the battle field. ;)
And also, i like having decent PS and wpf in melee for my archer, so doing a xbow seems a good choice for an hybrid range. Bit fed up of having ro tun with 8 athletics just to jump shoot at the guy following you. Even more since athletics seems less viable that it once was. I'll join the xbow/2h crowd next gen, definitely !