Having owned manuals for 6 years and now owning a DSG, I can safely say the DSG is far better in the snow for starting off. I had no wheel spin what so ever it was brilliant.
One thing i will say is stopping can be a bit hairy in the snow as i found out today. In a manual you can use the engine to brake via the gears, in DSG it does it slightly but no way as much as you can in a manual. The poor ABS was working over time this morning.
As above ... DSG is great for setting off in D ... gentle and smooth and D will change up to higher gears very quickly
However, I have found stopping is a different matter, particularly on downhill icy stretches, and personally I prefer a manual for stopping. I found the "creep" in the DSG, which has to be overcome by the braking, makes it harder to feather the braking. I experimented on my local estate road and found the best method (for me), for stopping to a
standstill downhill was to :-
1. Use the paddles in M mode (at sensible revs) to downchange and slow the car in advance
2. Brake as little and gently as possible
3. Put the gearbox into N for the last few metres if very slippy and you think you may start to slide (i.e approaching a standig queue of traffic).
I realise that 3 is against VW advice but it works for me and is only at very low speeds for a few seconds, and is the only way of fully disconnecting drive to the wheels.
