I would like to get an enhanced version of the Simple Icons option.
Currently, the Simple Icons mode only shows standard icons, as if the registered icon resource could not be found (Program, document and other files).
Files types which are registered to the system usualy have an Icon of a localy stored program or library file. Most of these icons also are stored in the ShellIconCache. Therefore displaying these icons is relatively cheep and fast.
What is expensive is to extract icons from remote files, as is usualy necessary for programs and icon image files and those file types handled by a IconHandler shell extension, as well as custom icons for folders.
For this reason, I'd like to get an icon display mode which shows all those registered icons except for files which need to be read in order to determine or extract the icon to show.
This mode wound offer almost the same clearity as the normal mode but without it's speed penalty on slow drives.
FreeCommander offeres a mode like this.