If you had a choice about whether or not a company were making a fighting-caster type or casting-fighter, depending on how you look at it, would you rather have a prepped spell caster on the casting side of this combo, or a spontaneous caster?
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I'd prefer both options, with one chosen at 1st level.
A prepared fighter/magic-user has the advantage of being able to learn new tricks and completely change his 'schtick' by preparing a different set of spells. It's going to have higher highs and lower lows than the spontaneous caster, as it can have a crappy day when it's got nothing useful prepared, because the player anticipated encounter X with critter Y, and got encounter J with critter K, or a totally amazing day where the player prepped his spells with the tactical acumen of Sun Tzu.
A spontaneous fighter/magic-user has the advantage of being more consistent (and, from both GM and Player standpoint, easy to predict / prepare for the usefulness of) over the course of a campaign. If he's got the spells to deal with something, he's always going to have those spells, and he won't have 'off days' where he didn't prepare the right spells, or 'too easy' days where he prepared something that the GM was totally unprepared for.
Personally, I like the idea of a Duskblade-like spontaneous fighter/caster, where the choices of spells are strategic (made when you level up) instead of a prepared fighter/caster, where the spells are chosen more tactically (every day). But I wouldn't want to impose my own preference on others, and, as someone who'se played prepared casters since the '70s, have no problems at all understanding that many others would prefer the prepared option.
So, ideally, yes to both!
[Which, yeah, is a fence-straddling wishy-washy non-answer, but I never promised to be useful!]
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I suppose it depends on the class description... but if I got to design it from the ground up, I think I would design it as a spontaneous caster. I might be falling into a bit of stereotyping but I get the impression that a caster who prepares his spells is a bookish type and a martial character wouldn't be so focused on studying from books.
That's not hard and fast but it seems like an instinctive match. It would probably take a little work to make a bookish martial character seem as natural. Not impossible by a longshot... just not quite as instinctively matched up.
I always thought something like Killer Shrike's Totemic Shamanism would work well for a magic/martial class. Essentially, the Class would have only a handful of Spells that have a lesser and greater effect.
This would fall into the spontaneous casting model.
If I'm going full caster I like prepared for the flexibility.
However if I am going X/caster, regardless of what X is, I will go with a spontaneous caster. I look at X/casters as using the magic to boost their ability to be X in interesting ways. I only need spells that will boost X because that is what I specialize in.
Others may disagree, but that is how I've always played.