Well, I've had my Prius for a couple of months, long enough to form some more lasting opinions. Time to share.

I love the car. It's cute. It drives well. And I love the fact that I don't wince when I go to the gas pump, even with rising prices. I only fill up every 400 or 450 miles, and that's less than 10 gallons. It takes me about 2 weeks to burn that much gas, and Kat is driving the car a lot, too.

The radio sounds good and the A/C is effective. Visibility isn't as good as my Jeep, but it's not horrible, either.

But... there are things that I'm not so sure about. The do-it-all computer is kinda neat in some ways, but I find that I spend too much time with my eyes inside the car instead of watching the road the way I should be. Yes, the dash is a lot cleaner with no A/C controls and limited radio controls. But I'm not sure I care for the price.

For instance, to change radio stations and get away from the talking morons, I have two choices. I can press the channel-up or channel-down buttons on the steering wheel. That's a good interface.

But if I want to pick a specific station, I have two choices. I can step through them using channel-up until I get the right one, which generally means glancing at the computer display while doing so. Or I can go to the audio panel of the computer and pick the right one. That's at least two button presses -- once to select the physical "Audio" button then again -- after glancing at the display -- to pick the right station. Two presses that require you to look at the display when I could have done it by feel in any other car I've ever driven.

The A/C controls are also annoying. Again, I have some control from the steering wheel, but again, I find myself using the display instead. So a button press to get to the climate controls, then at least one more button (and usually multiple presses) to achieve the settings I want. Furthermore, there's a stealth heat mode. Let's say that yesterday was hot, so you set the A/C temp to 72 degrees. The next morning it's cool and you just want to get some fresh, 60-degree air in the car. You hit the Climate button, press a fan on button, press the A/C button to turn the A/C off, and ignore it. Well... the car will think you want the inside temperature to be 72 degrees, so it actually heats the air. Yuck. When the car gets too warm, you realize the mistake, hit Climate, then press the down-temperature button until it goes to "low".

Maybe there's an easier way to turn the heat off, but it's not intuitive on the panel, so I probably should re-read the manual again. But I've never had to guess to figure out how to turn to straight vent mode on a car in the past.

What I would like is to be able to have several "presets". Maybe off, vent, heat, a/c. And maybe a high/low version of them. I could control what temperature a "low A/C setting would be" -- probably fan at a low setting and 72 degrees, and a "high A/C setting might just mean high fan. But low heat might be 65 degrees (take the chill off) with high at 70 degrees. Making these easily and readily accessible from the steering wheel or with a single button press would be nice.

I don't like the way the computer reverts to the energy management page. I radio channel flip a lot and would like to stay on the audio page. I vaguely remember that might be an option. I'll have to take a look.

I would prefer to be able to drive all operations of the dash by feel without looking away from the road.

I do like the volume controls on the steering wheel. And the channel up/down buttons are handy when channel surfing.

I love the keyless entry. The rear hatch area is nice for groceries -- I like it better than either the Jeep or Kat's Van when grocery shopping.

Fabulous turning radius, maybe better than the Jeep, and the Jeep is designed for off-road where turning radius matters.

Acceleration is good, the car is relatively quiet -- certainly much quieter than the Jeep -- and well built.

I love the car. But I guess if I were going to redesign it, I'd put some traditional controls back in or perhaps make some features easier to use.