I’m typing this (slowly) on my DS. I bought the DS Browser today, and I have to say that it’s not bad.
There are problems; small screen, difficult text entry, slow rendering… all things you’d expect from a device that wasn’t designed with a browser in mind. The wifi transfer speeds seem unusually slow as well.
With image downloads disabled, download and render times dwindle into the acceptable range. With the daily-increasing number of text-only sites designed for wireless devices, this shouldn’t pose a serious problem. However, if you think you’re going to do any serious browsing, forget it. Digg, Engadget, or Fark would take forever to load. And, of course, there’s no tabbed browsing. You get one window and that’s it.
The browser offers two modes. Overview renders the entire page in miniature on the top screen and allows you to scroll around a zoomed-in version using the stylus. SSR (small screen rendering) mode renders the web page in a single column of text and images. I’ve found that reading BBC news and The Onion in SSR mode works quite well.
I’d say the DS Browser was worth the $30. It’s a decent system that allows me to essentially use my DS as a very tiny, very limited laptop. Overall, I’d say it’s a few steps up from trying to browse the web on a cell phone, and a few steps down from a dedicated device like a Blackberry.*
*I’m guessing on the Blackberry statement. I’ve never actually laid hands on one.