Having put in a few hours with my shiny new Nintendo 3DS, I've found myself somewhat annoyed. It has been well established that the Nintendo 3DS was rushed to market: the system's launch line-up is a little thin, the use of cutting-edge technology sacrifices battery life, and core functionality, such as the eShop, has been deferred to future system updates. But I can't help but feel like the scramble to market has resulted in some unexpected design snafus, some of which cannot be remedied without a hardware redesign. Of course, it's unfair to bag on Nintendo's brand new handheld—there's plenty to like about the system, too, beyond its highly advertised, newfangled 3D display technology. With that, I present to you my top five jeers and cheers for the Nintendo 3DS system.

Five Things I Hate about the Nintendo 3DS

5. Menu load times: When navigating the Home menu and sub-menus, such as the Friends List, the system displays an interstitial loading screen. By my calculations, it takes roughly three seconds to load the Friends or Notifications List, and a whopping five seconds when returning to the Home menu. This runs counter to an otherwise slick Home menu look-and-feel. Hopefully, a software update with some code optimizations can and will reduce the waiting time, or maybe these time-wasting interstitials are a case of poor stylistic choice, but it's possible this is an inherent limitation of the system's software architecture or hardware design.

4. Tapping is required: For many Nintendo DS games, using the touch screen is optional or of secondary importance, and I can only assume this trend will continue on its successor. As such, I have found I prefer using the D-pad and face buttons to navigate my DS Lite menus over clumsily unsheathing its stylus.  Simply put, I don't like unnecessarily pulling out the stylus. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 3DS menu requires just that for fairly trivial actions. Sure, you can browse your software list and open a game without the touch screen. However, the touch screen is required when the Home menu pops up dialog windows, such as when setting up the system for initial use and informing you of how to use your new system. And as far as I can tell, you can only open your Friends List by tapping the small icon on the top of the home menu. Why?

3. Stylus storage: On the DS Lite, with practice, the stylus can be pulled out quickly while leaving your right hand anchored on the system. This isn't terribly useful for southpaw gamers, but, being right-handed, I became rather proficient at this technique. On the 3DS, the stylus is far less conveniently placed, as it is unsheathed from the top edge of the system, to the left of the game card slot. This requires you to entirely move one of your hands to pull out the stylus, which I suspect will become a problem at some point during gameplay. I have also found it more difficult to grab the stylus while it is stored in general. The DS Lite had a nook with an exposed portion of the stylus flush along the bottom of the system, allowing the stylus to be easily snagged and pulled out with friction. On the 3DS there is a too-tiny hole along the side by which the stylus can be pulled out using the tip of a finger or fingernail. You can mitigate the inconvenience by extending the stylus and then putting it back in preparation for gameplay, or by placing it on a nearby desk or table session, but neither option is optimal.

2. How it plays Nintendo DS games: As Neal already pointed out, Nintendo 3DS poorly up-scales the image for Nintendo DS games, especially on the lower screen. The alternative—playing DS games in their native resolution—results in two very tiny Nintendo DS screens that may or may not be viable depending on the game's use of the touch screen and the player's eyesight, and requires you to uncomfortably hold Start and Select while selecting the DS game. If, like me, you are bothered when you sit in front of an LCD computer monitor that is not running in its native resolution, be sure to keep your old Nintendo DS. I can only hope handheld Virtual Console titles look better.

1. Secondary face buttons: The positioning of the Start, Select, and Power buttons are terrible. Start and Select are located below the touch screen, on either side of the Home button. Reaching below the screen is uncomfortable, and worse, the three buttons are hard to find in the dark since they are unlit and—like an old airplane's worn-out volume controls—do not feel like discrete buttons. But the kicker is the power button's placement—smack dab where start and select used to be on the DS Lite and DSi. No less than thrice have I unintentionally turned off Pilotwings instead of pausing it. Did Nintendo really feel the power button needed to be in such a prominent location? Couldn't it have been placed above the Circle Pad or below the D-pad instead? Surely I will adjust with time, but someone at Nintendo really dropped the ball.

Five Things I Love about the Nintendo 3DS

5. The telescoping stylus: What an ingenious little contraption! At E3 I thought of it as a clever novelty, but after extended use, it really is handy. The stylus can grow to almost twice its length, longer than the DS Lite's but shorter than the XL's, allowing for different stylus lengths to accommodate different scenarios and different personal tastes. It even feels evenly weighted both when fully contracted and fully extended.

4. Unified Friend Codes: Some denounce friend codes, but I actually don't mind them as long as it's one number per system. Entering a dozen friend codes was a quick and reliable process, and afterward the system greeted me with information about which of my friends were online and what they were currently playing—critical features sorely lacking in the stove-piped world of Wii. While it's true accounts are still tied to hardware, and players still can't log into their profile on a friend's system, that's far more of an issue for home consoles than handhelds, since you would probably bring the latter to a friend's house anyway.

3. The Home menu: The Home menu takes what's intuitive about the Wii menu and spices it up with more customizability and more descriptive (and entertaining) preview animations of currently selected software on the top screen. The Home menu can be brought up conveniently at any time during gameplay, during which time the software is suspended. All-in-all, the Home Menu is flashy, functional, and intuitively and subtly promotes the system's dual screen and 3D features. What's more, it (along with unified friend codes) suggests a more flexible, centralized infrastructure that is more malleable than Wii's patchwork software architecture.

2. Primary input devices: The Circle Pad is very comfortable, providing smooth analog control and a comfortable grip. The four primary face buttons and shoulder buttons have a nice, if slightly click-y feel. I prefer the DS Lite's softer D-pad, but have no qualms with its placement. And while it probably doesn't qualify as a primary input device, the 3D slider is a fun, tactile, and attention-grabbing means of controlling the 3D effect on-the-fly that allows personal preference to reign supreme.

1. Built-in software: Like the Wii, Nintendo 3DS comes with a suite of built-in software to provide some utility and introduce users to the system's capabilities. However, the 3DS's package is more coherent and of greater utility, without distracters like the Weather and News channel. For example, the improved Mii Maker leverages the inside camera in order to semi-automatically create a personal Mii; the preinstalled Face Raiders and AR Games provide simple diversions that make compelling use of the stereoscopic cameras and 3D display; and the Activity Log is leaps and bounds beyond the Wii's message board equivalent.

Hopefully my ranting and raving has been both informative to potential buyers and entertaining to owners. Will these frustrations subside or be addressed over time? Are the system's new features truly enhancements, or just part of the brand new system's novelty? Only time will tell.