Personally, I do not care for the cotton-poly blends for outdoors use, but YMMV. NyCo beats it in all ways but cost. However, cotton-polyester is much more suitable as a general purpose outdoor fabric than ordinary short-staple coarse-weave fabrics. Long staple cotton in very fine weaves, usually with some sort of DWR finish, is just a whole different topic and IMHO prone to some pretty extreme opinions on performance (both ends of the spectrum).

So let's drop Ventile and similar fabrics out of the discussion for now. I will note that my first-hand experiences with those type of fabrics, while limited, have been generally favorable, but I have realistic expectations - they are not really GP do-it-all fabrics.

Cotton/Poly is more about durability and so forth than anything else. 50-50 NyCo has been around a lot longer than an earlier poster mentioned. That blend is far superior to cotton-poly blends for most conditions, but there is more to the story... Take 2 different US military clothing items, both 50-50 NyCo, both readily found surplus: D BDU trousers and Field Trousers. The performance in windy/cold conditions is dramatically different in favor of the field trousers. Why? Weave. The D BDUs are twill; the field trousers are sateen. Durability is about the same, but the cold wx performance of the sateen makes it seem like an entirely different material than the twill (and it is).

BTW, neither will "melt" on you like pure nylon or polyester - part (only part) of the reason it is a blend is to provide reasonable protection against that from happening from flash burns. Performance is more like cotton in a flash fire.

Anyway, I digress - 50-50 NyCo sateen clothing that still has its Quarpel water repellent treatment intact performs incredibly well - it is STILL my cloth of choice except for very hot conditions, and I can pretty much afford anything I really want. Surplus clothing (any blend) is very unlikely to have any useful Quarpel treatment remaining. Re-treatment with a suitable commercial product is something I'm finally forced to experiment with (my DW insists on laundering my gear too frequently...). Jury is out on what is "suitable" so far.

NyCo does NOT dry as quickly as 100% nylon, to be sure, and there are conditions where I just absolutely prefer 100% nylon trousers and windshirts. But no one fabric does it all; most of us just compensate for what we are accustomed to using, according to the individual choices we make and conditions we experience.

If you like the poly-cotton value-performance, use it - it's not bad stuff, regardless of MY preferences. Any outdoor clothing fabric for temperate to cold use is improved with a decent DWR finish freshly applied, so you might want to consider polishing up your gear that way. No rec from me as to which product to use - my experiments are strictly on NyCo.

<edit> Epic fabrics (which can be about anything material-wise, as long as it is treated with Nextec's propitiatory process) may be the best soft shell stuff so far. I think I would really like NyCo Epic as an outer layer. Think I'll wait for the post-season sales, though... <end edit>

HTH,

Tom