Can you expand. Because I've probably done a few hundred SVN branches. And probably 100 Git branches. The big advantage I had with Git was that since it is decentralized, you don't have branches on the server (so no need to have a tempbranch target on the server). But that doesn't seem like a huge deal to me.
The actual activity of branching and merging seem equally easy to me.
With just 100 hundred git branches, I think you're not really using git often and/or to its potential. On a busy coding day, I easily create a few branches. If you also count temporary branches on non-development testing machines (I do driver development on Linux for fun) that can easily reach a dozen.
Now what for? I create branches to test merges with other developers code, branches before refactoring my in-progress stuff (so I can go back and pick up the original branch with all its history in case it was a dead-end). I do new branches for simple fixes, tracking down bugs (versioning all test-patches so you can check the next day/week what theories you've already tested is sometimes extremely useful). Sometimes I just do a new branch to get the feel of starting with a clean slate.
Once a month or so a look at all the branches lying around and delete those no longer useful.
All this is only possible because git branching is _cheap_. Orders of magnitudes cheaper than on any central rcs. And the best part is that git never ever loses anything. git reflog shows you _all_ the states you've gone through to the current one. So all these branches are actually valuable.
Relatively unscientific, but git merges feel smarter. It notices when I've moved a file (without telling it I did), and I experience fewer conflicts that I was used to. Some possible suggestions as to why here:
Also, the fact that commits have an atomic life is useful. If I cherry pick a change into a branch and then later merge it, Git generally knows what's up. With SVN this sort of scenario seemed to confuse things. Another advantage to this model is that it's very easy to compare (what commits differ between these, instead of a big code diff).
The differences may be subtle, but all in all I find myself much happier and more likely to use branches than I used to.
The actual activity of branching and merging seem equally easy to me.