Mac,
As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on this one.
The whole reason for this post is to get as many opinions as possible and yours and everyone elses is most welcome.
If you have some facts which could swing the case one way or another, I'm sure we would all like to hear them.

My mind is definately not made up on this subject,
but what about yours?

Actually "facts" are a bit thin on the ground with this.

I think that everyone would agree that it is a fact that the O/U configeration needs the barrels to open further than SxS.
Also it would be a fact that (all things being equal) this greater opening distance will take more time to achieve than the shorter travel of SxS barrels.

But all the rest, like harder to load, slower to load, narrow sighting plane, lower barrel sighting distraction, poor accuracy etc are at this point really only opinions IMO