That was mostly the main point I was going make in reply to the original message, but you beat me to it. As the saying goes, Time is Money, and I get irritated when a 'so called" feature gets in my way and slows me down. Looking good is fine, but only when it doesn't get in the way of my productivity.
I see his point to a degree, but running programs is not where this latest version of the Start Menu is frustrating me. He probably missed my post where I mentioned that I use Hkey_Local_Key and it's subset ClsId to make my own icon right click menus so that running any program I habitually use, and any accompanying utilities, is a maximum of two keyclicks away, one to open the menu and one to execute. You just can't do that in the default Start Menu or, for that matter, in the Classic Mode menu. The other major benefit of doing this is that I can combine all related programs/utilities etc. in an easy to reach spot on the desktop. Doing this is not something I would recommend for everybody because you do have to know what you're doing and be comfortable with editing the registry. So running programs is not the problem.
The problem is that with my graphics work I generate a whole lot of movement of files/folders and maintaining them in a logical structure within the Start Menu is not very easy. There's a good reason for that. The default file/folder structure of the Start Menu works just peachy fine if you don't have very many files/folders, but quickly generates into an overcrowded and hard to read mess when you have a large number of them. Trust me, if you haven't noticed it, when the All Programs area starts getting over 50 or so files/folders it quickly becomes a hard to read mess. It wouldn't be so bad but for one thing, the alphabetizing routines in the Start Menu had distinct changes in the move up from XP to Vista, and now to Win7. I.E. It no longer allows you to group your files and folders into logical arrangements of like folders and/or files. The blasted Win7 menu, I quickly discovered, now insists upon placing the folders at the bottom of the list in alphabetical order, the exact opposite of how I want them. It insists on alphabetizing EVERYTHING even though I have that option turned off in the Start Menu settings. I can move anything to exactly where I want, but at the next boot it's alphabetized all over again. At least in Vista, in either default or classic mode, when you got off the Main Menu and Program page the file/folder names would stay in the order you arranged them. That's not happening with this latest iteration of the Start Menu, plus drag&drop is now noticeably slower than Vista.
Now, for the real reason I don't like the default Start Menu. It's simple really, and boils down to the fact that the default first page of the menu is loaded with clickable links that I rarely, if ever, use. Using the Classic Menu seriously reduced the clutter of useless, to me anyway, links to a bare minimum.
As an aside, the search function that some of these fellows keep mentioning is a non-factor with me. Basically, my stuff is NOT maintained in any of the default Documents, Music, Games etc folders. Personally I think anybody who actually uses those folders probably needs lessons in logical thinking and how to organize a hard drive so you can quickly and easily find your files and documents without having to waste time running a search in order to find them. I probably have about 30,000 or so graphic files, of one sort or another, on my system, and none of it is on the C partition. I don't really need to do a search to find anything because I have everything broken down into logical sections/sub-sections. Of course there's also the fact that I work with them so much it's pretty much a no-brainer for me to get right to them faster than the time it would take me to set up a search.
Actually, my own personal take is that you should NEVER maintain any working documents on your system partition, and that includes installed programs. The system partition should be just that, the place where your operating system resides and works. Your programs and working files should _always_ be maintained in a separate partition. I come by that philosophy by the dint of hard experience (along with lost data) gained over close to 40 years of working with computers.
I will say though that I do believe I'm going to fall in love with the Libraries feature, it looks like a feature that is a good enough reason all by itself to upgrade to Win7. It has great potential to be a real time saver.
Gads, that was about 6 more paragraphs than I meant to write!!