Yes, I agree that the Driver Guidance pane takes up more space than necessary. Actually I think there is no need for the pane to exist at all. The information contained in there could be just simply overlayed on the map, like some other navigation products do it.
Yes,
iGuidance is considered by many users to be more driver-friendly. It doesn't offer so many features like
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 does, but many users can happily live with limited number of features. The picture bellow is
iGuidance version 4.