>One thing that I hated about Windows pre-7 and Linux until Ubuntu was taskbar objects. Why do they need to take up so darn much space? I worked for hours laboring over Gnome 2 to get it to work like Windows 7, with icon based taskbar objects, trying every program and customization I could find. I finally got it just as Unity was announced. I was ecstatic that I could get rid of Gnome 2 and have a desktop that looked how I wanted right out of the box.

Indeed.

And actually, after installing 12.10 on, to be fair, new hardware, Unity was just as fast as anything else.

I do despise GNOME 2 and especially its taskbar window list. I'm glad I've found someone else as pained by it as I.