Toothless Lion - cannot read mail-header, iTunes do not start automatically, DigitalColor Meter is useless, where has the speed gone

Question

I guess that new versions of a software should improve things - Apple seems to have a different oppinion. There comes the top four of my Lion-Problems (three among a lot of others):
MAIL
In that new interessting summary view (where a bunch of emails with same subject is shown) in many cases the sender address "breaks into the next line" and overlapps the subject. So I cannot read neither the complete subject, nor the senders email address. Has anyone the same problem, or better, a solution for this?
iTunes
I checked the "open iTunes if this iPhone is connected" (free translation from german version), but this does not impresses iTunes any longer. I always have to start iTunes manually to get my phone synced. Any solution here?
DigitalColor Meter
OK, I found something in the community about that issue - so no question here, but a comment: Apple, do you really thing that it is good practise to sell the old version of a software for money in AppStore, while upgrading this software to a useless bunch of bytes for free? Please inform me about that completely new strategy in public relations.
Speed
New OS versions are slower than older ones, because of improved functionality. That is ok. Is there a way to get rid of those new functions (whatever they are, but I did not miss a thing in Leopard, s whatever is new, I guess I do not need it) to get back speed? Loading web pages, starting applications, ... everything is much slower now ... much! Can I stop any services/daemons to get back a bit of speed? And if so, which ones?
Maybe someone could help - maybe Apple with the next upgrade...
Regards,
Thomas

Answer 1

Thank you for the sympathy and the information about the Adobe.com forum Michael.
I posted here because, to be honest, for a company that's acknowledged their installers and updaters and support needs some work, they seem very determined to obfuscate the means by which users can provide direct feedback to the company. Much like you, I've also noticed a trend in CS5 installations that mirrors the issues that were present in CS4. it's a sad state of affairs.
As for my installation, you are also quite right to say that a clean install would have been a lot faster than what I went through with TS and it was actually my first idea. Before calling TS I'd actually read through the forums and noticed that a large number of users who were faced with my situation had no other choice but to reformat. I was just giving Adobe the benefit of the doubt and wasted 2 and a half weeks through that course of action...
What makes this situation even more frustrating is that the installer failed on a fresh system. It was a custom-built design machine, assembled and configured by myself. The only software that had been installed on it prior to Design Premium was Firefox, an FTP client and the start of my problems, trial versions of various CS4 programs. I used trials just long enough to retire the previous design computer so that I wouldn't contravene the EULA's stipulation of not running more than one instance of software at the same time on different machines.  Turns out being honest once again penalised a legal customer.
If there is just thing users should learn from my far from unique tale of failed tech support it's that if you ever run into a problem with the installation, don't bother calling TS, just reformat and start from scratch.  It might seem like it'll take longer to get going again, but in actuality, it's the opposite. Reformatting means you'll be up and running in about 1 or 2 days rather than 2 weeks.
Marc