Okay, granted, I didn't actually use any other banks so I don't really know what they are like. All I can say is, this is my experience with HSBC:

• You have to fill out a form online to sign up for an appointment to set up an account. You can't fill out the form before you get here because you probably won't know your phone number here until you get here and buy a phone and SIM card. (Of course, you might know your number if you bought a phone from someone here, and you might be able to just make up a number ...)
• After you submit the online form, you wait about three weeks, during which HSBC will refuse to even confirm that they got the form.
• Eventually, you will get paperwork in the mail that you have to fill out and bring to the bank with your letter from your college confirming your address. HSBC has a branch conveniently located in Market Square in the center of town. However, because so many students want to open accounts at the beginning of the school year, they rent a room in another building south of town to deal with all their student appointments. They give inadequate directions to the building (what they don't say is that you have to be on the opposite side of the comparatively busy street in order to see it) and because it is a temporary room, nobody in the stores nearby will know what you're talking about if you try to ask.
• Having done all that, I was signing the last paperwork at the end of a half-hour appointment before the woman noticed that I had put a post office box as my address in the States. She told me that they needed my street address, not my mailing address, because "what if the bank wanted to visit you?" (surely an overseas bank would be sending me mail, not flying people from Britain to Pocopson, PA) so I had to wait til the next week to get another letter from my college. Granted, this will not apply to most people, but who knows what other minutiae you might run into ...
• They also wouldn't tell me what the charges were for depositing a check in dollars (even when I told them the amount of the check). I don't know if other banks will tell you, but it seems a reasonable question to ask.
• Okay, so this last one is partially me being stupid, but I was pickpocketed in Prague and I hadn't written down my account number or credit card numbers. I called HSBC to cancel the card and they couldn't find me in their records based on the address at which I had received a statement one week before. I wasn't able to cancel the card until I returned to Cambridge and could look up my account number and sort code. For reference, I was able to cancel my MIT Federal Credit Union cards with no problem. Moral of the story: know your account numbers, and find another bank.