Neonchameleon
Legend
Tony, I run a great game of 4e, and I totally get what you're saying here. My point was that folks like you, me, @pemerton , and others are pretty awesome DMs - we tend to have experience DMing across editions and have been playing around with 4e quite a bit. It's not that 4e CAN'T do these things (eg. quick trivial combats), on the contrary I think the system is quite versatile...it's that the *presentation* of the game tends to pigeon-hole less experienced/adaptive DMs.
Don't assume that all DMs who run 4e are hyper-experienced. I'm not (my only experience DMing 3.X consisted of a Kobold deathtrap dungeon I'd put together). And at my local groups there's always a problem for 4e that there are too many DMs and most run pretty reasonable games. I've never played at a 4e table where over half the table wasn't either running a campaign, had run one, or was about to start one. If anything I think 4e is easier for new DMs than for people used to previous editions of D&D.
And yes, the breadth ofthe advice needs work.