X axis differences between Prusa Mendel i2 and RepRapPro Mendel

I'm looking to build a Mendel from scratch very soon. I was given an eMaker Huxley kit by a friend a few weeks back, I've since built it and commissoned it, and it's making fantastic prints. The only negative thing is a somewhat limited parts size. So the obvious solution here is to build a full-size Mendel (and luckily all of the full-size plastic parts can be printed on my tiny Huxley).

I've tried looking through all of the Mendel variants and remixes to try and see what suits me best. I immediately decided against the Mendel90's and Prusa i3's because I don't have access to cut flat sheets of aluminum or acrylic/plastic, and I don't want the expense of buying these pieces. The regular Mendels on the other hand, are incrediby cheap to build if you can print the parts yourself. The hardest part seems to be picking out a variant.

So my main question at this point has to do with the configuration of the X axis smooth rods on the Prusa Mendel i1/i2 and the RepRapPro Mendel.

The normal Mendel configuration is two parallel X axis smooth rods:


And the RepRapPro Mono Mendel / TriColor Mendel use two vertical X axis smooth rods, which happens to look like a larger Huxley:


Being that I've recently built a Huxley (and printed out a second set of Huxley parts), I do like the vertical configuration better. It seems simpler and easier to print. But I'm wondering if there are any disadvantages of this design over the normal (and much more common) horizontal configuration. I've searched high and low for information on the "why's" behind the various differences, but haven't really found anything.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2014 11:29AM by FlyingLotus1983.

To answer my own question, I found this:

[forums.reprap.org]

and these:
[reprap.org]
[reprap.org]


So it's settled, I'm going vertical with the X carriage