To address a number of questions....
I did a clean install. I have no haxies, customizations or any OS utilities that could affect performance. Every non Mac app I have is self contained. I have no third party Dashboard widgets.
In general I find it performs about the same as Panther. Of course searches are faster because of spotlight. And, the H.264 video is remarkably efficient. It shuts down much faster than Panther but logs in slower (that may be the source of user switching costs). This may be because Dashboard widgets and spotlight engine must start a new instance for each user.
Dashboard client itself has crashed but immediately returns and it only did so once, so that may be fine. But, it is the widgets themselves that are most buggy and poorly designed. I mean, not only do you have to click on the stickies to type (which makes sense) you have to keep the mouse over the sticky in the title (which is undocumented, and doesn't make sense unless you're used to TWM or something). Although, its not much worse than the Stickies.app which can lose all its Windows. I think come closet MS fans are responsible for everything having to do with Stickies on Mac OS X. And, the dictionary is problematic as described by others. I've had weather widgets drop off, stickies, and the calendar at different times.
I have no problems with the aesthetics of the widgets being unique. I think that is fun in that context. What I have a problem with is the behaviour very far outside the level of refinement one would expect for a Mac utlitty. And, worse yet, behaving in secret and non obvious ways that are not optional but core functionality.
As far as aesthetics I was referring to the fact that Mac OS is starting to look more and more like an old Grand Am's interior. Any individual piece of plastic was not poorly designed. But the assembled results was about 8 different shades of muted earth tones (grays and tans or beiges) with no consistency about the whole thing. Leaving Dashboard completely aside, Keynote, Mail, iTunes and the Safari open at the same time make it look like you are running a bunch of separate OSes. No one of the apps is designed horridly. But, there definitely isn't he consistency there was before other than the Jelly beans at the top of the Window. And, it is getting worse and worse with every OS update, not better.
I can understand a need for a couple of different styles of interface. But, the new Mail one is just change for the sake of change. If they changed the nature of aqua so all apps looked that way I'd be happy with it. But, that isn't what they did.
And, as for the comment that there is nothing like Dashboard anywhere else. Wrong! Even on OS X it has at least 2 similar predecessors. Unless you meant another "exactly" like Dashboard, which is just silly.
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