Well I understand that not every feature will suit every user, the highly configurable nature of PC's and their hardware and software is the main attraction for me....
I can understand how Library's aren't going to work on a NAS box, and that's not really the fault of Microsoft. Maybe in the future the makers of NAS boxes will include indexing software so that they can be used. It's a period of migration as with all new OS's, and as far as I can seee the library feature is a very usefull addition which will no doubt mature into something more configurable.
As for removing the favorites from the navigation pain, whilst I don't know of a way, you can click organise and then remove the whole windows pane intself by clicking ORAGANISE, LAYOUT, NAVIGATION PANE. this will remove the whole pane of course, but assuming you aren't using favorites, and the librarys arent usefull for you then all you'll be missing is the my computer and network ist, which no doubt already appear in the right hand pane anyh00....