I have the desire, having had the iphones including iphone 4. I have got used to it and now find it quite easy. There is always the odd typo but the way the desire works, and im sure all android, is that they give you a selection so if your wrong it will auto change it or you can pick it yourself.
Another vote for Swype. Swype is the best keyboard I have used. It occasionally gets turned off, but simple to reenable it.
Only thing i miss from iphone is the magnifying glass for chosing a specific region
If you are selecting from a web page or email, hold down on the touch screen until the start and end markers appear. Dragging one or the other marker should pop up a magnifier window. When editing some text you are writing, it took me a while to realise that you can move the cursor point using the optical trackball on the Desire.
For SMS, I am now using GoSMS as it is smaller than Handcent. For twitter, I am using Twicca. Other apps I use regularly are ColorNote, CardioTrainer, Sky+ and Our Groceries
Another fantastic app is Tasker (paid - £3.50) which allows you to script actions. I have a couple set which help me to find my phone if I mislay it - the first script on receipt of an SMS message containing a certain code, turns on GPS, finds the current position of the phone and sends it back in an SMS. The second script I use; on receipt of a different code in an SMS, turns the ringer on full volume then rings it.
Get it from their site (
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/) and you can get a 7 day free trial to play around with it and see if it will do what you want. It is also cheaper to buy direct than from the market. Example scripts at
http://tasker.wikidot.com/profile-index