Love driving a manual, especially in the snow. I find with automatic, the disconnect between me and the road is jarring. I can never get used to the fraction-of-a-second delay while the transmission "thinks" about what to do next.
One of the things I like about the auto in my Mustang is that I can shift with the paddles. It has two modes, Drive and Sport, and both can be fully automatic, or with Sport, you can make it manual only, so it won't shift until you tell it to. Even with in Drive mode, you can control the shifting temporarily, and that's helpful to get around the transmission having to "think." If I'm driving down the highway and a car is going slow and I want to downshift and go around, just a few flicks on the downshift paddle and I've dropped a few gears and can get right around them. You don't have to punch the throttle and wait for the transmission to figure out it needs to downshift (although in sport mode, it's pretty quick at figuring that out).