I'm also frustrated by the menu(s) for DNN, and I understand the issues.  I've taken to using other menu systems, the .NET 2.0 Treeview and even a hard coded menu on occasion, though almost always in addition to the DNN menu.  Personally I don't find the Solpart, House or DNN Menus to be different enough to warrant separate menu options, and I pretty much don't like any of the three.  I like the new DNN Menu but it isn't as configurable as I usually need.

Separate menus break the idea behind dynamic navigation, but I have used them rather frequently as horizontal shortcut menus.  I often use a JavaScript or DHTML menu where I have to code the links I want, but it's for primary navigation only.  Paying attention to page hierarchy can help some, but any DNN-compatible menu is still tough to work with.  And if I had to edit a menu file or sitemap.xml every time I added a page I'd go nuts.

I looked at cretaing a new menu module and gave up, but mostly beacuse I had better uses of my time.  Developing a new provider isn't really that hard and could be adapted from existing code, it's just a pain to do for someone with my skills and attention span.  Deciding the features of a new menu system wasn't hard for me either, what I really wanted was something simple like "Include this page on the menu" as an option.  But then again I need to have menus at upper levels that don't drill too deep and deeper menus to have lower content, but not all the content, and still have upper level links, and...

You get the point.  Death by Feature Creep.  But I'd pay for a decent menu that met my needs...  :)

Jeff