I suppose, a few days on, my main gripe is that roughly only a third of the screen is devoted to the thread itself. [ That's the important bit - we come here to communicate ] .The ratio of central text and margin / extraneous guff needs tweaked, if possible [ please].
While I'm grateful for the hard work and effort that's gone in 
nevertheless I'm hoping for a Windows 8 scenario ? Meaning that feedback could eventually lead to a [at least partial ] return to the older, better way of doing things.