<<<I dropped into the Leica Store in Washington DC yesterday, and had a chance to look at the Leica T in the flesh.>>
I did too, on the same day. I had my X Vario along with me. The T body feels great, no doubt, and it was easy to sort out how to work the thing. The zoom lens did not do much for me, however; in just the brief time I had with it, my impression was that it is not as well made as the X Vario lens. I know it catches a lot of grief, but that's a very well built and good lens. It is built as well as the Nikkor 17-55 I used to own.
One other thing that I preferred on the X Vario to the T: The manual focusing method. Like the Sony A7 and the Fuji X-E1, the T enlarges a portion of the frame to aid focusing, but then that part takes up the whole viewfinder. The X Vario, and the X2, I believe, magnify only a central square in the middle, so you can still see around it. I prefer that and wonder if it could be added to the T if people so desired.
Of course, the T does have one big advantage: You can take the lenses off. It's too bad that it doesn't have on-chip phase detection focusing, though, as then Leica could add the sliding-bar focusing aid that Fuji uses in the X-E2 and X100s. That would make it seem like a real rangefinder!
