Just tried the Jazz i-shift myself. It's bloody awful in low gears, compared to the CVT... worse than my fears, I'm afraid. Yes, I know it may 'need practice', and there's some mysterious art of 'anticipating the shift' by lifting off the accelerator, but it all rather defeats the object of a having an auto box.
I understand people buying one mainly because they have a dodgy left knee, of course. And I'm sure it's fine for motorway and country lanes. But if you like to have an auto for town driving, in town traffic, or for stop-start conditions, the CVT is superb and the i-shift a disaster. As a CVT is shortly reappearing in the Insight, it will almost certainly be in the Jazz Hybrid when it comes out in 2010.
So, it's either buy the manual, or hang onto the Sport CVT until 2010 and buy the hybrid. Big mistake Honda UK ... it would have been so easy to import the 1.5 CVT that the rest of the world has. But then anyone who can think up a marketing campaign as dopey as 'Pass the Jazz', illustrated with childlike graphics [ie 'get past me, I'm such a hopeless driver!'], clearly shows a serious lack of judgement.