Okay, I'm a wee bit drunkish so ignore any typos I decided to leave at 2 am.
The reasons I liked 35 were the following:
1. Very small squadron, very closely knit group of IPs and studs. Only thing I've seen that came close was VT-28 because the squadron spaces were closer together and we were weather/ACNA'd together so many times we had to get to be friends...
2. The TC-12 is AWESOME to fly--a very forgiving aircraft in a lot of ways; relatively easy to learn to fly but difficult to truly master. It actually has enough power to fly (i.e., climb) single engine if you had a no shit emergency or really shut an engine down for something (which I've experienced), unlike the T-44 which MIGHT be able to get away from the ground in the event of something bad happening.
3. Yes, we had a few irritating/no-fun IPs, but they were few and far between. The rest were awesome. From what I hear, 31 has MORE than its fair share of dicks; my friends in 31 kept pointing them out to me at the O-club during wingings: "Yeah, there's douchebag so and so, and that guy's a prick too..."
4. My onwing was in the front office, and he was just happy to be flying. 'Nuff said.
5. Maintenance was rarely if ever an issue for us. For all the complaining others farther up the chain appear to be doing about the maintenance contract we have with L3, we rarely have that big a problem with our planes. Occasionally we might have an A/C, NAVAID, or pressurization problem, but it's far more rare than in 31 from all I've heard. They seem to really fix things on our size better than in T-44land instead of writing if off as "unable to duplicate on ground" and calling it fixed like I've heard they do in 31. That happens occasionally but not as much.
6. While we don't have the glass cockpit that the T-44Cs have, big frickin deal. You're going to be flying something with steam gauges until the MMA comes online anyway, right? The C-12 can go longer, farther, and faster than a T-44 could ever hope to go: our contact flights can be conducted in the Rio Grande Valley vice the local area, so many times you'll get an uncontrolled (or controlled; depends on the day) field all to ourselves to practice landings, and AIRNAV solos can be very long if the weather is decent. T-44s get to worry incessantly about course rules and how the pattern at Cabaniss works; I saw VFR course rules three times in advanced and my fam partner never really figured it out because we never had consistently good enough weather (I recognized enough from Primary to get by).
7. Type rating. While lots of people make a big deal out of it, it isn't that huge a deal. Really, it's just nice to have since almost every command has a C-12 sitting around somewhere and you'll be able to fly it from now on, or be able to fly your rich millionaire buddy's Super King Air with a little refresher training. Not a bad deal.
To answer your last question, the C-12 and the T-44A are different cockpit-wise in some significant ways. I never played with the T-44s so I don't know all the differences; some of the big ones are the the right seat has to lower the gear in the T-44; left seat has the gear handle in the C-12. Radio setup is vastly different in the T-44; we're still in the stone age in many respects in the C-12. Any 31 bubbas want to chime in on this?
Hope this helps. I'm gonna get some water and sack the f out.
(So far, -35 is winning...)