Steve at Revit OpEd has posted about how he feels about the Properties Palette and other interface items here.
I recommend you also check out the comments – Troy Gates makes a very interesting comment where he refers to this AUGI thread. In this thread, Troy mentions a registry setting that some of you (particularly those deploying Revit 2011 to lots of Clients) may be very interested in…a setting that allows the ‘default’ or preset Properties Palette to be set without opening Revit!