I came really close to the same decision. But honestly: I like gnome-shell (not all of gnome 3, the totally mucked up dconf/gconf configuration mess in F15 is unforgivable).
Along with all the favorite gadgets, it also throws out a ton of crap. It just gets out of the way for the most part. The clean vertical desktop scrolling is actually a fantastic feature once you get used to it. Putting the status icon mess into a hot corner seems weird the first time, but I find I quickly got used to it and that it's a great way to save screen space. Likewise I don't need to dedicate screen space to a desktop switcher: swapping desktops via the top left hot corner can be done very accurately (after a little practice) with two quick flicks of the mouse. Dragging a window all the way to the side locks it down to a half-screen-maximized mode which duplicates almost exactly my preferred working environment and saves me a ton of fiddling.
Really, I think it's a keeper. It's got some serious maturity (though not stability) problems in Fedora 15 right now. I think the defaults for some of the settings are just wrong. But overall I like it.
I really like Gnome shell too, and I agree that there are a lot of settings that are just wrong by default... I have to change quite a few (many of which are stupidly hidden so I have to do it via gconf or a tweak application) each time I set up a computer with Gnome 3 to make it usable. And even then there are some design issues that totally ruin some parts of the user experience that I hope are fixed soon. For example, you can't shut down the computer. At least, you can't from the GUI without googling, and finding out about the secret key you have to hold to make the option appear. So they've gone and made an function that many users every day completely hidden and undiscoverable.
And when you complain, well, of course they can't change it because "it's in The Design", as if it was a document set on a stone tablet delivered from heaven...
Along with all the favorite gadgets, it also throws out a ton of crap. It just gets out of the way for the most part. The clean vertical desktop scrolling is actually a fantastic feature once you get used to it. Putting the status icon mess into a hot corner seems weird the first time, but I find I quickly got used to it and that it's a great way to save screen space. Likewise I don't need to dedicate screen space to a desktop switcher: swapping desktops via the top left hot corner can be done very accurately (after a little practice) with two quick flicks of the mouse. Dragging a window all the way to the side locks it down to a half-screen-maximized mode which duplicates almost exactly my preferred working environment and saves me a ton of fiddling.
Really, I think it's a keeper. It's got some serious maturity (though not stability) problems in Fedora 15 right now. I think the defaults for some of the settings are just wrong. But overall I like it.