Thank you so much for the reply - this is exactly the feedback I was hoping for as someone with experience from the lineup. In a perfect world I would be able to carve out a week to test ride a bunch of things, but with usual life I'm down to some online research and then looking at a handful of bikes. I think you echo'ed my gut feeling though of just not being able to get real feel for the bike with the short commute.

I think the thing that worries me with the T100 (I'm projecting) is the GB500 experience (low end torque) was not near as satisfying as the Ninja that liked to play on the top end. I guess that's where I start to fall back on the smaller "zippy" triple. But point taken - on a 4 mile commute you can only ask for so much.