I don't think so. I'm not a huge tweeter and so anything that gets in the way of the rare things really jumps out at me, of which the slow status box is no small issue. Other than that the redesign is just that, an expanded sidebar with some fleshed out boxes. No big deal. That it's causing different problems for different people tells me that maybe something else is going on behind the hood. Heck, maybe they just want to be the network and aren't interested in providing a groovy webapp interface anymore, who knows.