If you don't have the time or inclination to tinker with things like tiling WMs - and more power to you if you do, but I don't - KDE is the best there is.
Everyone knows Dolphin is by far the best file manager, but not a lot of people know that Kate is fantastic. Konsole is really good too. The new System Monitor basically replaces a ton of programs. Spectacle is a great and snappy screenshot utility. Filelight is so useful.
There's definitely a few misses, though. kmail in particular. But, overtime the applications actually improve, both in performance and features. This seems to be in contrast in gnome, where apps like Nautilus have been getting worse for a long time. And in contrast to Windows.
Like what? Running htop or btop++ in Konsole(or whichever terminal emulator you prefer), as I do?¹ :)
Just opened that thing right now, and it gives nothing to me.
Shrug?
¹ On one of 9 virtual desktops, arranged 3x3, usually upper left.
But the real icing is that it doesn't just work for processes, applications, CPU usage and whatnot. It works for any sensor, including temperature and fans. And, of course, it's all customizable.
That's seems to be common for all the monitoring stuff running graphically, no matter if Gnome, XFCE, or even old KDE (Trinity).
That aside, htop and especially btop++ are heavily customizable, too.
Whatever. To each his own. It's a matter of taste.
I have a tiny tiny bone to pick with whoever decided to enable bouncing app launch icons on my mouse that look terrible.
But like you said, it was just a matter of finding the right config setting to turn them off! I have been quite happy with KDE all things considered.