Yeh I know, they need a hardcoe option where they have weight, same as in F:NV with bullets.... or maybe that was a mod - well doesn't really matter. I could always mod in some weight later on anyway.

Here's a great little video about Longbows VS Crossbows; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HagCuGXJgUs

So it would appear that Skyrim uses some sort of really fast adaption of the goatsfoot-loading crossbow.

A modder just released a basic crossbow collection with crossbows of each type btw guys; he's adding bolts in soon as well as far as i know....
So no reason why Bethesda couldn't do this! ;P

Crossbows has high damage but low rate of fire, worse the forced reload after shooting leaves you very exposed, you sneak around the corner in an corridor and see a mage in front of you, you shoot him, with an bow you can run for cower, with en crossbow you will stand for a couple of second while he cast spells on you.
Close up against melee enemies is even worse as you can not block or do anything.

On the other hand the crossbow is ideal for long range sniping, it do serious damage in the first hit, the reload time is less important as the enemy is unlikely to find you fast anyway, and it's easy to avoid the very long range counter fire, it also look like it has flatter trajectory than the bow I find it easier to hit targets at very long range with it.
Closer range, switch to an bow, it only reduce movement before you fire and you can abort that.
Found that Lydia really like the crossbow to for some reason, she did never killed much with an bow but she is an killer with it.

If you use high powered smithing an bow would be better anyway as the smithing bonus add an fixed damage to any weapons so the fast bow will do much more dps.
I do not see any reason to change anything here,

Actually in real life the English longbow has a better range than a handspan crossbow.
The Crossbows in Skyrim also have a pretty damn fast reload-rate as compared to a handspan crossbow.
I also suggested in the OP that all the Crossbows be rebalanced to match up with the bows.
As it's a game I imagine the bow and crossbow will be able to shoot as far as each other.

I know that an longbow has better effective range than an crossbow in RL, however in the game the drop off at 70 meter is less making it far easier to hit targets at long range. The other benefit is that it has higher base damage who make it good for sneak shots, the downside is not only the long reload time but more that you stay pretty put some time after shooting, this make it pretty useless at close range.
If the dwarwen crossbow was nerfed down to the dwarven bow, they could just as well remove it, the low rate of fire would give much lower damage/ seconds. Yes it might be an bit to powerful but not much.