As you gave no constructive comments as to how she is to fly I was answering your reply.
Actually I did...it flies fine. The thing is this...if it were a dangerous airplane, would it be in service around the world today with the history it has? Of course not. Have you ever seen any statement that it's a challenging airplane to fly? Of course not, because it isn't. It is a very straightforward airplane.
You're correct that it's not a front runner in advanced technology. Many of the 747's out there are being navigated with INS models such as the Litton 92...if you haven't seen one, it looks like a 1970's calculator with a LED screen. It's not nearly as intuitive or clear as a modern FMS type system. Boeing delivered models set out specific to the airline that bought the airplane; the switches are different, the avionics different, the layouts different...one some airplanes the switches move one way to accomplish a function, but on other airplanes the switches move the other direction to do the same thing. Today with many of these airplanes having been bought and sold around the world, a 747 operator may have all kinds of differences between airplanes in the same fleet, as they've been bought from other companies.
As our training department likes to say, we had a uniform fleet...until we bought our second airplane. They also like to say "Get in, sit down, strap on, see what you've got, and go fly.
We fly the -100 and the -200. I don't have any reservations about flying either one, else I wouldn't fly it.
The 747 is a big, stable airplane that's more about numbers and mass management than it is about flying finesse. If you fly the numbers, the airplane will do what you expect it to do. Nothing happens fast in the airplane. Planning ahead and being stable are the keys to making it do what you want.
It's a crew airplane. A good flight engineer is a valuable part of the crew. When you handle an emergency, you fly...that's it. You ask for an engineer report, and a living, breathing professional is right behind you to come to your aid, to manage systems, run checklists, analyze the problem, take care of it. Worth his weight in gold. It's really the flight engineer's airplane...pilots pretty much just drive.
You do fall back to the basics...planning your descents with math in your head rather than waiting for the green arc to guide you down, and VNAV is in your mind rather than your fingertips...but it's no different than you'd do if you were flying a light twin, and no more complicated. Plan ahead, know the numbers you want, then apply them. The airplane will do what you want it to do.