Hopefully faster will actually happen! It's always been painfully slow.
I miss the unread and updated buttons, its way harder to find new content and make new posts otherwise. This seems to be in the works though.
I dont like the persistent header at all. I get it makes business sense to kind of constantly push the other bits of the site but just like banner ads on website, people will learn to ignore it eventually (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness). Since people will ignore even after the first few times, i dont really particularly like the fact it steals the 20% of my entire screen space and cuts things off.
I realise in almost any IT project, any change will bring dislike from the users. Right now i dont like the new colour scheme, its kinda harder to demarcate signatures and the different boards. That said, i'm getting used to it slowly already so thats maybe not so bad.
Finally, next time there is a major disruption advanced notice would be good. For a major website to unexpectedly black out for an entire week is kind of unprofessional and has the potential to damage the user base. Imagine if facebook, reddit or the commonwealth bank went dark for a week with no explanation. I understand it was perhaps mentioned on facebook but not everyone uses that and it apparently made it sound like it was only for a few hours. Of course, it's kind of the low point of the study season (as low as you can get) but still.
The rest of the other new features sounds good!!