Meh. Unlike most of the changes I've seen here, this one just turns me off. It's visually cluttery without actually offering anything useful the viewer.
That's incorrect actually. Numerous usability studies have shown that icons speeds up the navigation a lot. That's why websites and sofware uses them.
Lets take that "Troubleshooting" over there as an example. Human eye finds the question mark icon much faster than it finds the "Troubleshooting". After a while, your brain stops trying to find the text and only concentrates on the image.
Your point would make more sense if I had put pictures of Homer Simpson and Micky Mouse over there. Those kinds of images would have been totally useless and bad for usability. But the plan was to find images that fit the navigation.
I'll add some more and we'll see how it looks.
