Dislikes..

1. Browser Independence

As a Mac user at home this is a pet hate of mine.  The solution is still not browser independent.  Although most functionality appears to work with Firefox and I assume most other Mozilla based browsers there are still items such as One-to-One email transfer that rely on ActiveX.  I am pleased to say that they appear to be significantly fewer than before. 

Other browsers?  Well, Safari was a non-starter when I tried it.  

2. R.I.P. Central Search

I quite liked Central Search in PC UI.  You could set it up so it was always at the top of the screen allowing you to search for pretty much anything, from anywhere (see below). It would appear that it is no more. 

3.  Robustness

The overall feel is one of an interface that is more robust and less sensitive to Internet Explorer browser settings than either PC UI or the original IC Web Client. 

There are a few glitches but I need to remember that there is SP 1 out and we were running on SP 0.  We will upgrade to SP 1 in the next couple of days and so that many of the niggles experienced such as occasionally having to refresh screens etc will go away before the solution goes into General Availability. 

4. Where's My Favorites

In PC UI you used to be able to mark items as Favorites (sic) such as accounts, contacts, opportunities and leads which would allow you to access them quickly and easily.  As a user of CRM 5.0 I find this quite useful and am sorry to see it disappear. 

Overall

User uptake is key to a successful CRM project and usability a large determining factor.  The relatively clunky nature of PC UI combined with time consuming development meant that often solutions left something to be desired from an end user perspective.  

PC UI hasn't completely disappeared and some of the views in the new UI are uncannily familiar.  However, based on my relatively brief hands on, I can say that the interface is definitely more useable.  Combine this with a significantly less complex development framework and I think this is a big step forward.