well, I know it gets old, but just know I am excited for you about Friday now too. People can nit pick any figure, and I don't want to blame people for this when we pay high end prices because sometimes being really overly critical helps some of us do something a lot of us have trouble doing- saying no to a figure from time to time. Hot Toys does better on some figures than others but they are almost always the best option available. From what I have seen so far I wouldn't say their Ben Kenobi is perfect but it's pretty darn good and it certainly DOES look like Sir Alec Guinness too me. I can understand why some people think the Sideshow sculpt was better but the poor paint app really takes away from it. The Hot Toys sculpt, even if you want to argue that it isn't quite as good, it STILL is clearly Alec Guinness and the paint app makes it far more life like. The Hot Toys body also makes it more life like and likely will be easier to be posed more naturally.
I certainly wouldn't fault anyone for keeping their Sideshow Kenobi and not upgrading to this if they feel it doesn't make enough an improvement to warrant it; especially when their are so many figures out now people may want and most of us have limited budgets. I considered keeping my sideshow Ben and Leia when I preordered HT Luke and Han (&Chewie two pack), but because I am displaying these together I don't think I am going to be able to resist upgrading Ben and Leia to Hot Toys too.
My current display has SSC Ben without his outer cloak giving SSC farmboy Luke his lightsaber. A replica of the lightsaber from ANH is displayed near by. If I change my display around and display Ben by himself perhaps I can keep my Sideshow figure with his outer cloak on, hood up, and with his own lightsaber ignited. But again, the Hot Toys one looks really really good to me, and often the post release jitters everyone fears just before figures like this one starts shipping gets calmed down after people start showing them off in hand. So again, I am looking forward to Friday and seeing some real pictures from actual collectors of this in hand.