I am finding I don't much like the sidebar either, I really need to figure out the keyboard shortcuts to get at all that. I do like the top bar and the global menu thing on my netbook. It looks nice and saves some space. I have gone through a lot of effort to de-clutter my desktop, and use the keyboard a lot, Gnome Do is my go-to app launcher, which is just a meta-space keystroke away. I find that the Unity just feels cluttered compared to my normal workspace.

I'm making myself take a week with Unity before I give up. (Partly because giving up means moving away from Ubuntu, the Classic option is going away next release I have heard.)