Oh dear. I wish that I could say something nice about the new scheme, because obviously a lot of time and effort has gone into it. It does seem to have demonstrated all of the mistakes
that the rest of the IT world knows about and tries to avoid, like:
INADEQUATE warning of change
INSUFFICIENT beta testing
ABSENCE of parallel running during the transition
LACK of consultation with the end users.
OK, so I'm not the typical GA user. I fly balloons for pleasure and my typical flight planning is necessarily biased towards the met and planned track. But I always checked the NOTAMS because it made for good airmanship.
An example: A few weeks ago the text version threw up the fact that the Red Arrows were doing a display at Halton which is close enough to my area for a "heads up" from me! If I'm not flying a predicted track from ICAO airfield to airfield there doesn't seem much in it for me and hence not a lot of point in even looking. As others have said, it doesn't do a lot for my perception of air safety. I'll just have to rely on being highly visible to others....