I've been playing the single player combat build (that just got released to the kickstarter backers) for a couple of hours now. I don't have a joystick so it was mouse and keyboard for me.
Some thoughts:
0) Those videos from Kroy are great! "Elite: Dangerous Alpha - Back To Basics - Part #1"
1) A decent framerate is vital. Once I found that it was CTRL+F to turn it on I could see my laptop was doing 15 FPS. I dropped the resolution and detail and I now beat the first Sidewinder mission about half the time even though I can hardly see it. Will try it on my PC but I expect it will be slower - at least the screen is bigger...
2) Absolute mouse controls are tricky (but surely the way to go once I get better). Using relative controls with additional keyboard keys for pitch in case you get into a turning race makes it much easier
3) I started with flight assist off - don't do this as you're so busy tapping at the throttle you can't fly it
4) Having the yaw keys handy (A and D) makes fine adjustment when shooting much easier.
5) Keys only is harder as you don't have such each access to yaw because you're covering pitch and roll instead.
So I can already see that skill will play a big part in the game but unfortunately my 8 bit keyboard skills (which got me to Elite on several versions) are pretty much useless! So much more to learn
Also please note that the build people like me have is very different to your beta build as shown in the videos. We don't have so many control options and can't separate out the pitch/roll sensitivity from each other for example.