Agreed on all fronts. I too prefer XFCE for what I have seen, though I am intrigued by LXDE. Wonder if they will do a round-robin of all these desktops. Most interestingly to me would be a true roundup sans 3rd party programs. Too many complaints how OOo does not compare to KOffice because OOo is not part of GNOME. That is unrealistic in the above article, in my opinion, because being part of it and being the default is not the same. OOo IS the default office for GNOME regardless if it comes with it or not. KOffice IS the default office regardless if OOo is there or not (until the user switches). These are why the article was correct despite the nay-sayers. That said, any distribution could change the default before it is sent out, so a true roundup would be sans 3rd party. Or put the 3rd party on all of them for speed comparisons, et. al.
Enough of my rambling...