Initial Impressions of the Nintendo 3DS

Attention city folk, townsfolk, country folk, and travelling folk wearing cloaks but not carrying staves,

Planning on replacing my long dead and dearly missed DS, I headed for the local game store, in order to peruse their collection of used systems and hopefully pick up a DSLite for cheap, or perhaps a DSi.
Instead, I left carrying a shiny, lightly used 3DS.
If fit comfortably in my hands, though I do have slightly larger hands than the average person I have met, so that may not be the case for most, and I booted it up shortly after leaving the store.
First off, the much-toted 3D effect deserved checking out. So, I utilized it, both in the menus and in-game(Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time has been beautifully ported). It works well, at least so far. True, other eyes viewing the screen instead see two-disconnected images, but handhelds are generally used for solo play, and if you have an audience, you have the option of turning off the 3D effect with the slider, without harming your gameplay(at least as far as I have seen.)
Also of much amusement was the AR Games. Using the AR cards(which luckily were still with my used system) you can interact and play with your real-life environment, up to and including bending the surface to form a golf course in which you fight a dragon. Also fun was fishing in a "lake" made up of the arm of a chair.

I do have a few complaints with the system though. The battery life...is laughable. Particularly when playing 3DS games using the 3D. It is no wonder that the sales clerk told me to buy the extended battery pack-this system desperately needs it.
Also of some annoyance is the low quality of the cameras. Both of the outside cameras are a mere .3 megapixels. My three-year old cell phone was nothing close to a professional grade piece of digital photography equipment, but it managed to have a 2 or 3 megapixel camera. It was disappointing to be taking a picture of my miis playing leapfrog and having a fuzzy background image, despite good lighting.
The internet browser isn't perfect...doesn't support flash...but i didn't buy a 3DS for internet, so that I can live with.

Other than that, it is a worthy handheld, especially is you just wanted to play your DS games again and don't mind investing in the system for what's to come, like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, StarFox64 3D, and maybe even Threatrhythm: Final Fantasy(which is a whole other ball game)