Well, Unity 2D was actually really ok for me, but Unity 3D -- now the only option out of the box -- is really FUBAR. I just rolled my girlfriend's laptop back to 12.04, and am going to sit there until next LTS probably.

Didn't they kill Unity 2D recently?

Yeah, Unity 2D isn't an option in 12.10. Unity 3D doesn't support the video card driver in this laptop (a Radeon M6xxx series) so I'm pretty much hosed with my HDMI out. That was a dealbreaker for me.

Rolled back? Can I do that, or did you just reinstall? 12.04 was solid.

Yeah, just reinstalled.

I just switched to lubuntu, i recommend it even for powerful pcs

If Canonical could make a pretty interface that is as fast as Lubuntu, that would be great. For example Lubuntu works much better on Cortex A9-based Nexus 7 than Ubuntu.

Been using LXDE with Ubuntu for over a year now.

HUGE fan of LXDE, stable as a rock and perfect for my requirements. I require a couple of minutes of fiddling around with the launcher to get the positioning right but apart from that it's a very solid desktop.

LXDE's multi-monitor capability is broken in several ways, otherwise it's pretty good

Indeed. I used arandr to make an xrandr script that runs at login. Works beautifully.

Xrandr is a great program to know, especially if you use projectors a lot.