Good post. But I can't believe you asked HTC about 'managing memory and the best way to exit a program.' HTC didn't make the OS, Google did.. Why not get in touch with the android team
http://developer.android.com/index.html http://code.google.com/android/ and ask them their reasoning for this ?
For some reason I bet only us former WM users are looking for a way to close a programs and desperately looking for a way to flash. I've never ever ever had any out of memory messages with the hero, the 3 weeks I've had it. Personally I'm more worried about running out of app storage and not even that much. Besides the SMS problem, lets just enjoy are phones.