Humm OK?
I did not state half of what you said so it does not agree with your point fully. The only point that I agreed with is that there are custom roms and the updates come out a little slower. I have to say the slower updates is still up in the air as there was only one update for the Hero. With 2.2 it will never come fully out as the processor is slower and will not run everything. The Droid and other vanilla Android phones will be in the same boat one of these days. We will see how long it takes 2.2 to come out on the Evo to see how much longer it will really take for the update.
Now on the Sense UI, I actually like it better than the vanilla look and feel. This one is just a preference. There is no right or wrong answer on this one.