Sure, all you mentioned about KDE4 are indeed drawbacks that hold me from using it. What I expect to be done for KDE4 is some 'Classic mode' (like for Windows), that will rip those horrible kid visuals and needless daemons. Also merge of window manager features from 3 to 4 is a must to decide KDE4 more or less serious shell. Sorry, I don't want to repeat in details why TDE is wrong. You can find it in bugs (open and closed) and here on the list by searching for my name. Figuratively speaking, they try to move a mountain to build a straight way through when it is satisfactory to build a road over that mountain. They will never have enough resources to move the mountain, the project will always be half-finished and half-working. In fact, all this tremendous work is needless. And moreover, it is even worse than this simple image. Moving a mountain is finite job and what they do is doom of endless support. They will never have time for real features and bug-fixes. Moreover, I'm afraid that they will only make more bugs. Unfortunately, both of these projects KDE4 and TDE hadn't followed real users expectations.