How fast can you select a focus point?

I had pretty much concluded that manually selecting focus points on a 1v must be pretty easy, otherwise it would have ecf. Then I read an EOS 3 review where the reviewer considered 45 focus points to be worthless without ecf because of the time it would take to manually select a point.
So, how easy is it to manually select focus points? Can it be done without having to take your eye from the viewfinder? I guess reducing the number of points would help, right?
I'm saving for one of these cameras and reviews like that just confuse me more.
Thanks in advance.

No more than 1 second to select any focus point once you get good at it. Also through a custom function you can reduce the number of focus points to speed things up. The number of focus points has never even once been a limitation for me.

Neil Fitzgerald wrote:I had pretty much concluded that manually selecting focus points on a 1v must be pretty easy, otherwise it would have ecf. . . .

You are assuming that manufacturers and engineers perfectly understand your personal requirements, which clearly they cannot. And even if they did, there are all sorts of conflicting inputs that determine what goes on a particular product. (Consider seatbeats. Today's inertial-reel belts were designed for the convenience of people who didn't use seat belts; for those who did use belts, intertial-reel was a step backwards. Today, it would take an act of Congress to allow you to put a racing-type harness in a street vehicle, although the racing harness is far safer.)

If eye-controlled focusing works for you (the current Canon system works for some, though not perfectly, and not at all for others), you will never want to be without it. For me, there is simply no faster way to focus many subjects. In the absence of eye-control, I would focus many of these subjects manually or with manual override.

Neil -- I find selecting the focus point manually on a 1V (or 1D/1Ds) body is an exercise in hand-eye coordination, so if you're good at that and spend some time practicing, you'll be able to select one quickly. It can definitely be done without taking your eye of the viewfinder, and your thumb will usually be on or near the right button. After that, it's how practiced you are at turning the dials the right direction and distance to end up where you want. The 1V/1D/1Ds also have an AF home button, which you can preset to any point and get there with one button push. The most common choice is the central sensor.

Cliff Beittel wrote:You are assuming that manufacturers and engineers perfectly understand your personal requirements, which clearly they cannot. And even if they did, there are all sorts of conflicting inputs that determine what goes on a particular product.

I guess I was assuming that they would throw in all the bells and whistles on the top models, especially bells that are available on lesser models. You know what they say about assumption though...
Sub second EJ. That’s what I wanted to hear. Gives me something to aim for.
Matt, I'm not exactly gifted in the coordination department, but I think with practice I could get there.

Thanks all.

I can manually select focusing points far faster than I can using ECF, since I am one of those people for whom ECF does not work at all. The actual number of focusing points has never been an issue - it's only something brought up by negatively biased reviewers from time to time.

I wish Canon had offered the EOS 3 in two versions - one without ECF - like they did with the other ECF-capable models. The EOS 3 is a great camera, but unfortunately the ECF feature didn't alow Canon to include a dioptric correction for the viewfinder or to provide sufficient eye relief for eyeglass wearers like me.