I think the CLI is pretty powerful on the ones that we have (3500, 5400, 6200). About the only thing I use the gui for anymore is to look at address tables.
We haven't had speed issues with ours, but then again we are a small manufacturing company of about 50 total users
I remember the last time I used it, it lacked the level of detail that I was used to, it was clearly intended to be web managed. Again, maybe they changed it.
True. One of the focuses for the client that had the PowerConnects was pushing wire speed gigabit to the desktop for voice and data. That was also around 2008, so quite some time has passed since then.