Zen Theme Shock!!

I was poking around the Drupal site, and discovered that Zen had released a new theme - v1.0.  Well, I thought, this is probably an improvement, so I downloaded it and installed it on my test system, which is my development PC using XAMPP.  SHOCK!  They completely changed the philosophy and operation of the theme.  Fortunately, they included the "zen classic" theme, which is what I have been used to, so I had a way to get back to where I was.
The new v1.0 theme is completely different.  From what I have been able to determine, the philosophy is that Zen is now a rough starting point rather than a good starting point.  I would NEVER use Zen as-is.  For reference, this site uses Zen (classic) as it is out of the box.  The new Zen is rough and, well, ugly out of the box.
So now the big decision is: how to go forward.  I know it will be some time before Drupal 6 has the modules upgraded that I need to move a site to it, so I won't have to face it for a while.  Maybe they will continue to make Zen Classic available so I can move without a complete re-do.  Maybe not.  I get the flavor that the Zen team is undergoing somewhat of a religious war and will make themselves only useful for those with lots of time to really develop a theme rather than what they were: a great starting point.
It's not that I don't want to work through developing a theme.  I have found that when developing a new site, the site owners have some ideas of how they want the look and feel to be, and Zen has been a way to start and then develop.  Some times, the changes have been radical, and some times simple.  But I don't have confidence that Zen (non-classic) provides the best starting point, as I used to feel.
So I will review the other themes out there to see if there is a better starting point.  Zen sure doesn't seem like it.