I've been using the login, register and profile page templates from Hybrid as well your tutorials on how to add custom fields to the user profiles with much success here: http://startupdays.ro/inregistrare/ (it's in Romanian)
My question would be if you ever used the default Wordpress registration routine (register, receive password by email, change password in the profile) combined with the register page template.
I see that you've added the "show_password_fields " filter in the template but it isn't used anywhere else.
I'm not expecting you rewrite the register-page-template just for me :) . Just wondering if you ever come across this and if you have any idea where to start the implementation.
Also I noticed there is no validation on the email field for a valid email. It's not a problem to add it my self but it could be added for future versions of the templates.