I had an 05 smg and it was good fun but I preferred the manual its a better drive, if you do a lot of town driving smg would good but its not better than the manual.

smg is quite clonky at low speed ie jerky and can be quite hard on the car eg flat out 1st into 2nd can make a loud bang you that you'd never feel on a manual.

SMG1 was on the E36 cars, rubbish compared with the E46, it was based on an Alfa system and changes are slow and they do fail, I had a low mileage '99 smg evo and it had lots of problems with the gearbox - BMW couldnt fix it told me it needed at new box at £3600, luckily George at tecnosport knew how to fix it.

He is an ex cossie racer and knows more about fixing M's than the main dealers;

http://www.technosport.co.uk/