For some reasons I have to agree with most of the things you call "Laughable". The menu is at this point way more complicated than it should be. For instance the whole car / track selection is not something I would call fast to use. Clicking through scroll lists to select something you want ( especially if you only have access to demo content you can click through lots of stuff and only see a locked symbol) annoying.
As far as I haven been told the way to set the wheel up is also used in iPaying but clicking to 10 menus saying turn wheel left, center, right etc is compared to the lfs way rather complicated.
And I'm not even starting about where to find what options (like changing the FF settings which I would never expect to find in the CAR setup garage).
Don't ask my why but I couldn't print duplex with Vista. Vista took 2 mins to start, 7 does it in 45 secs. I can use 7 right after I see the desktop and not wait another 15 secs for everything being loaded. 7 needs less space (ram and hdd).
Don't get me wrong, 7 is as annoying to use in some parts as vista was, but it's an (big) improvement (for me).
EDIT:
Also my notebooks battery lasts around 20 mins longer under 7 then it did under vista.
I was just using the smaller version, but it didn't create any startmenu entry for me nor did it create a desktop shortcut.
Running w7 64bit.
EDIT:
I guess you are also making the setup language selectable in the later versions?
EDIT2:
I was wrong, it did create the menu entry and shortcut in my Administrator account (I'm running a restricted user). Would be nice if that was selectable too.
Like: Install for everyone / just me (username)
arcade fire - funeral
björk - homogenic
daft punk - alive 2007
eels - electro shock blues
moby - play
morcheeba - dive deep
rolling stones - forty licks
röyksopp - the understanding
stereophonics - you gotta go there to come back