Hoppy, your media issue, right click on the media area and there are three options, Details, Icons, Thumbnails. Ulead, Nero, Windows Movie Maker, etc... are all usually limited to 5-10 clips at a time, but this is very dependent on your resolution of your monitor. I get 18 clips per page in Studio on details & thumbnails and like 40 in icons mode. Then if I click to the next page there's another 18 thumbnails... to me that's plenty to view at a time... How many are you getting? And if you want more, click on the folder icon at the top and it opens your standard windows explorer were you can see all you clips... I really don't see the issue here with these options... ulead is not this good IMO.
On performance, it does sound like your system is seriously constrained.. how many gigs of memory and what is your CPU? As a rough guideline, if your system is more then two years old, it's probably not powerful enough. Mine runs fine on a Core2Due 2.66. and that's like a $200 processor that's around 2 years old. it's not that it requires an expensive system, it just needs the power of the newer systems. $700 systems you buy today will run it amazingly well.
I don't know why your getting playback issues, I am betting your system is not up to snuf, mine works fantastic. and the preview screen on Pinnacle is much smother and crisper then all the other applications. I though Vegas had the worst preview screen of all, and Ulead coming in 2nd worst. Pinnacle was #1 albeit small, and nero was #2 because it could be really large and had good playback.
The activation part, while I agree is the most steps I've ever seen in registering a product, it's still only a couple of minutes to do and then your done. Will you really care in a week from now?
Also, keep in mind that Pinnacle is a background processing application... while it seems like it's doing nothing, it's actually working VERY hard in the background building transitions, previews, overlays etc... That's the most amazing part of this software that I did not see from all the others... it lets you keep working while it does it's work in the background. Watch the timeline bar that's colored orange or green... and watch as a shaded similar color progresses through your video... that's the background processing, you won't get good playback until that processing has completed because it hasn't actually built the video yet. let that finish, then you will get fantastic playback... even if your system is a little slow. I'm thinking this is your issue now, you are trying to preview it too fast.
