>Personally - never saw a need for the dashboard
>(1) Time warp ? I can click on today's messages
>(2) Monitor on-line users - I don't need to
>
>I found it was just occupying space - so I disabled it in my profile ( may even have set the width to zero)

The Dashboard is the most important thing on the site, especially the Time warp which is used at any point during the day to go back in time, direct seach into the search area, and now Settings and Subscribers section. As far as the rest, they are optional but very useful as all of them will save you clicks to access direct content. You can see it as Outlook. They are a left side as well with all the folders, save as we have here. This is just one example. And, you can collapse expand them as you wish.