I play on PC with an xbox 360 controller, so I'm sure I'll get the worst of both world.

I will concede that there was room for improvement, as many things do (now that you mention it I may check out the mod!). But we have seen an inprovement, so I'm fairly confident that they'll go one step further with Skyrim. And to be honest, the only reason I went into my inventory in ESIV or FO3 was to heal, repair, change armour or quickslot loadouts. Most of the time I used the quick slots. That may be why the UI never bothered me.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing how they've changed it.

Mitheledh pretty much nailed the problem on the head. Console and PC gamers have different needs because the PC gamer is sitting at the most 2 feet from his screen, while the console game is a minimum of 7 feet normally.