I'm thinking mostly of PAX when I ask this, but for anyone else who has played with a Kinect recently, about how far away were you ? 
And, do you remember if there was any issue with being too close? 
 
Obviously standing a couple inches away wouldn't work, but with my space limited to somewhere around the 4~5 foot range, I'm wondering if this is going to be a bust.

That's pretty much the only thing stopping me from dropping my cash to preorder one along with a copy of Dance Central (as that is currently all that really interests me).  I too am pretty much limited to about 4 or 5 feet if I give myself space to move around but if I back up against the edge of my bed I can get to almost 8 feet exactly.  I would have to do some major rearranging (that is, move everything to a totally different room) if I needed anymore space than that. 
 
I do have 2 Xboxen and I keep my profile on a flash drive anyway so it would be conceivable to have the Kinect setup out on the tv that I hardly use where I would have room but I just don't really want to do that.  This space thing could prove a problem.  I hope we have some firm details regarding that sort of thing well enough in advance to help me make my preorder/purchasing decision. 
 
*edited for clarity because apparently I was half asleep originally, leaving words out and such*

Looks like we're just having our own private little conversation here, at least for the time being. 
 
With what little info we have currently it seems that most any dorm room and apartment would be out of luck here.  Likely if a system is in a kids room it would be tough to come up with enough space.  I guess if Microsoft (or even Sony) expects to sell to families thinking that the casual Wii market will pick up their new devices then space might not be too much of an issue to them, but it is hard to believe that they would design something with such a terribly limiting factor.  I wasn't really watching the Wii when it was new, or even now for that matter.  What are the recommendations for space to play those games?  Seems to me you can basically be right up on your tv if you really wanted to but I do tend to be about 5 feet away.  
 
Got an email from Amazon yesterday, pre-order the Kinect and a game and get $30 credit.  I didn't look close, I'm sure it is similar to their usual deal where that credit is taken off of your next video game purchase but I'm cool with that.  So far that has been the most appealing pre-order deal I've seen and I really want to take a chance on it.  However, I'm still just terrified I'll get it home and set it up only to find it is totally useless for me. 
 
As silly as the Kinect may prove to be in the long run, I truly want this thing.  I think it's sort of just a "look, I'm an adult now and if a fancy video game thing comes out I can get it instead of begging my parents" but that doesn't make my desire any less.  I suppose I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope for some advanced reviews in time to take advantage of the deals.

Yeah, I was really hoping someone who played this a bit would have noticed. My bad luck to make a thread when things are blowing up with subscriptions and Halo. 
Just caught on the bombcast where Jeff was talking about the Sony Move, and he said something came up on the screen when he was checking it out that specifically says it wants a good 8 feet between you and the machine. 
 
I've only used a Wii a few times in a store, but for those times, it seemed to work OK having only a couple of feet between me and the screen. I agree, it does seem really strange that both Move and Kinect might have that much of a limiting factor. I got that same email from Amazon, and from what I can tell, you're right; the $30 is a credit towards a future purchase, not money off the Kinect, etc. I put some money down at a Gamestop a little while ago, so I'll probably stick with that. 
 
Beyond that, there's two Walmarts, two Gamestops, a Target, and a Best Buy all within about a 20 minute drive from my house. I'm hoping that at least one of them will have it together enough to get a demo unit set up in the next couple weeks. The closer it gets without having that sort of wide availability to check out, the more I think about how sometimes movies don't get released to critics before they get to a theater; it almost always means the studio doesn't want too many bad reviews to come out before people spend their money on it.