the disincentives seem to include the sorts of thing you mentioned above, and others - e.g., the dropping of ClearType functionality (ergonomics is kind of important).
-IainB
Yeah, and the lack of ClearType is only part of that. Outlook, for example, uses way too much white space. And I mean just that - white space, no borders or boundaries, no visual cues about where one thing starts and another stops, borders that are just thin line boxes. Very large sender names, all spread out too much. I guess the idea is it will work better that way when you are navigating with your finger. (I navigate my finger to them somewhat differently though. :P)