"[Bushing or Bearing:
It's personal preference really and it depends on your fishing style. The way we fish here in BC with the larger floats and pencil lead, the bushing would be a good choice and won't need much start up because of the weight.
Now..if you use smaller floats(below 20gm) and tiny split shot, bearing reels are good. Easy start up with a light setup in slow flowing water creating a drag free drift.
If your style varies then a bearing reel would be your best bet because it's overall performance will match whatever float/weight setup you go with.
It's tough to really say what to go with, the best thing to do is test one out if you know someone that has the reels you are interested in.
Solid points. Bearings do offer better start up overall and will work better in very slow flows. Although, a bushing reel that is well broken in is also has a pretty low start up.
Also, bushing reels are simpler in design and easy to take apart on the flow. If you get some grit in your bearing reel and you need to take it apart to clean it (because dunking didn't work) it's easy. On some bearing reels there is a bearing cover with tiny screws that need to be removed in order to access the innards.
If you're seriously considering the Milner, and you want to be traditional, stick with the bushing design, provided you're mainly fishing rivers with decent flow. Vedder, Chehalis, Stave, etc. If you're fishing some backwater sloughs with really low flows consider the bearing model and then you may even consider upgrading the bearings yourself later. The bearing model will have better start up right out of the box compared to the bushing model.