As been mentioned here before, it really depends on what you are doing. I've spent a lot of time felling in Europe, and am back there again. They use a 'traditional' face cut and like to cut as low as possible to the ground - to the extent of cleaning up the buttresses on some trees before cutting(especially beech). You can't really do this and use a humbolt cut. I also like the standard cut for speed on the smaller trees. With just small amount of practice, and sighting down the top cut, you can make your cuts meet perfectly every time, very quickly as you will see your bar as it nears and meets the top cut. It's handy when you have a hillside full of smallish(10-20" dbh) trees that need to go quickly. If you look on your chainsaw, you'll see there is a sighting groove on the top of it and not just the sides. That is for lining up your cuts when you start it the 'european' way, with the top cut first. It gets harder to do with larger trees unless you leave a small piece at the end and nip it later as the wood can be heavy, or if the tree is large enough(like 4'DBH+) where you can just cut the face wedge into two so it falls away. But, on larger trees, I do prefer a humbolt. Some of the ash and beech we have here love to split, barber chair, and pull on you. A simple pair of side cuts and cutting the back in a 'triangle' fashion tends to relieve the pulling issue. We bore cut if a hardwood tree is leaning a lot. Some folks like to purposely make it so you have to lever the tree or wedge it over to prevent pulling and for safety. I have seen a short as a 20% face cut on smallish trees in these instances, and the use of a felling lever. While safer, mebbe, it takes more time than I care to give to small trees.
They also use much shorter bars for costs savings and safety. I, personally, use enough bar if I can to prevent having to do any more cuts than I need to. But my main set up looks like it's gonna be a 20" or 18" bar on ported 365 with a BB top end, running an 8 tooth sprocket when I am done with it, so I can use and bring just the one saw for most work. The bark here is thin, so it's enough bar most of the time with the short dawgs. I am considering getting one of the Husky tech lite bars, but that;s going to have to wait until I make a bit more cash.
