In Windows 7, the Quick Launch functionality has been merged with the Task bar functionality.
Think about it, with prior versions, you had a set area for Quick Launch, then a set area for running Tasks, the space was being competed for by two answers to the same problem which could be condensed into one, and by having useless verbosity in the Taskbar (Text labels).
With Windows 7, all this is alleviated, and the Quick Launch functionality has even been extended to the point where you can pin types of Documents (Or Folders, or whatever) opened by the pinned Application, to the Application itself.
It seems to have the same annoying functionality as Mac, where the running/non-running icons share the same space. Is that always the case, or is it configurable? I have trouble telling which is running and which isn't (both on OS X and 7) -- I don't do well with shading and stuff like that.
Personally, I'd much prefer having a space reserved for running stuff, and another space reserved for programs I can run. As I said, I normally have 30+ icons on my quicklaunch, but I rarely have more than 2-3 programs running at once (I hate having a lot of stuff running, it makes me feel cluttered). It'd be incredibly annoying if running/stopped programs had to share the same space, I'd probably go back to putting all my programs on the desktop so I wouldn't have to look at them.
On a somewhat related note, what they ought to do is decouple Windows's interface from the OS itself, like Linux, and let people rip and replace the interface entirely. If I could replace the Vista/7 interface with XP's, I'd be far happier to use them. Better yet if I could use a stripped down theme like I do on Linux. I realize that it's possible to do this to some extent, but I don't think there's any good way.
And also, while idle with no programs open, and on a totally fresh install, ~300 - 400mb of RAM were in use. Is that normal?