Originally Posted by apleschu
I agree, the throw is short enough. And as far as smoothness goes: It gets better over time. If this is the same as all the other MB gearboxes (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) the gearbox gets better and better until you are at about 30k miles. I have 7000 now on our Xfire in the last two months and it is already remarkably better than on day one.
Like a fine wine it does get better with time. I too am finding the shifting to improve with time. I have 15000 on mine.