LNC: I've run into many of those problems myself. some have workarounds, some don't. you CANNOT empty the recycle bin w/o having it ask you if you're sure, w/o knowing the keystroke. you cannot sort folders & files together. As for shortcuts to finder(er explorer) windows... sure... if you're always goin' to the same place.
Taskbar: do you know it can be moved? it doesn't have to be on the bottom of your screen. if you put it on the top, windows like to get stuck under it. the OS shouldn't allow that to happen, but it does. Even in XP.
BodyPainter. rightclick on the desktop and uncheck the snap-to-grid option to take care of the icon problem.
I hear ya, though. the best day of my college career was pulling those shiney new emacs out of the box for our comp lab
