I believe that it is a little backwards in terms of efficiency.
But the old menu was only familiar to old users.
New users pretty much need tuturials in their face to understand how to customize their desktops and this is the best they came up with to do that.
Short name titles with long descriptions that tell you exactly what you're getting into.
For the more expirienced user this is just bloat getting in the way of efficiency.
I do agree that it would be nice to have a simplified Tabbed layout to easily swap between areas.
