On 5 December 2012 19:43, Gary Rowe <g.rowe@froot.co.uk> wrote:

I would like to chime on on the user experience of the SPV client (in particular MultiBit).

Without exception, everyone that I have introduced Bitcoin (which is a lot of people) have expected an "instant-on" experience. It has to clobber PayPal and credit cards or people won't give it a second look, let alone a second chance. SPV clients deliver on that expectation.

Once the user has the great initial "wow!" moment then their interest in Bitcoin is reinforced and they tend to explore further, particularly into the economic theory behind it. Many decide to install the full node out of a sense of community contribution to the security of the network.

Having a hybrid mode of SPV first then full node second should be something that a user has control over - it is their computing resources we are using after all and Bitcoin should not be perceived as a drain.

Hybrid SPV sounds like a good idea to me. Allows it to work out-of-the-box, then slowly gets up-to-speed with the full network - working low priority, or even not at all, if it detects a slow system or network link.
Another idea is always distributing the client with a checkpoint that is only days old, then starting by pulling in more recent blocks, so it can transact. Following that, it will pull in progressively older blocks as time permits.