Just helped a Paypal-less colleague to buy one, looks really cool, nice when someone else acts guinea-pig… 
Better dual core processor and wi-fi reception compared to the MK802, thats been discussed on the forum earlier.
If it works good with XBMC and I could get the kids and wife to use it, maybe my WDTV mediaplayer will be retired…
Can you use your phone as a bluetooth keyboard/controller?
On the German Android-Hilfe-Forum there have been reports of very poor Wifi reception and some people had to open the case and pull out the antenna to improve Wifi performance which seems to help a lot. The RK3066 Chip itself seems to be very performant speedwise... so if your friends main purpose is to play stuff from USB/SD it seems like a nice device. If I would have to replace my MK802 now... I would probably wait for the first reviews of the MK808 which already has Android 4.1 and dual antennas. The development scene still seems to be the most active around the MK802 as we can expect HCH to release the Uberoid Rom 1.3 in the near future with some very nice features.
@ Tecmo: If droidmote is baked into the firmware then yes... via Wifi.
The iBex UG802+ Elite is an updated version of the UG802 that fixes the WiFi issues
We're glad to have you onboard, zac1968!
What did the manufacturer actually change to improve the WIFI?
They really should start putting RP-SMA connectors on those sticks, so they could use external antennas.