I guess I take a few things for granted, but I am a little bit surprised at some of your observations. Based on what I've read, it seems that you're mostly frustrated by the cramped CO Y, and the fact that EUAs are really tough to get if not booked in high classes or Y. UA does seem to keep at a few NF and NC seats open ahead of time, especially on 757s at non-superpeak travel times. However, you also had the fortune of being able to burning 150,000 miles rather quickly. Once your balance has fallen and you're stuck playing the upgrade game as a 1P (or even 1K), the rules of the game change dramatically. Upgrades are really route specific, but UA elites gripe a lot about how hard upgrades have become. This is largely because UA flies A319s with 8 F seats on lots of midcons and transcons, and other than the 757s, UA has far less F seats on their domestic fleet than the rest of the legacies on a per-plane basis.

Some of the cons of UA:
-crappy RCCs
-ICC
-mediocre 1K agents
-consistently inconsistent service onboard
-understaffed airports
-747s in Y
-IAD
-expensive UP/discounted domestic F fares, especially compared to CO
-lack of agent training on QUPs
-smallest European network of the legacies

I will admit that being able to upgrade to F on C tickets is a nice perk, as is *G status and access to awards on SQ, NH, OS, LX, etc. If UA really works for you, thats great, especially since you have some international worked in. If you're a purely domestic traveller for biz like me, I've been really slow to fully switch to someone else, despite my unhappiness with UA just because its such a hassle. My experience with AA as a midtier has been better than my experience as 1K.

BTW, UA doesn't serve VIE. I'm assuming you upgraded to FRA or MUC and are taking LH to VIE?