Actually if you assign a wood cutter to a squad, (no different then activating him/her) you can tell him to go attack an invading goblin through the squad menu(s) as opposed to the military menu(m) and it's alot more "instant" than ever it was in the past see my previous post about stationing and preying. In 40d, on a haunted area, it was a pain in the ass to try to get my military to go out and attack skeletal deer(which often moved randomly). Now in DF 2010 I say go kill those skeletal deer, and the squads I want, REGARDLESS OF SCHEDULE/ALERTS, hunt down and kill the skeletal deer.
1. In 40d if you didn't have a barracks they didn't train, in 2010 you have the option of 1 mega barracks, or several specialized barracks(sleeping soldiers won't get bad thoughts from noise from sleeping in the barracks were others are training.)
2. In 40d, after Drafting your soldiers they wouldn't train either(until you deactivated them). With schedules you can schedule automatic training times, automatic patrol times, and automatic off duty.
3. There alot of DF players who got really excited about the arsonal dwarf. He was a NOBLE with FANS.
In fact I cann't wait for him to comeback. He, the Dungeon Master, and Philosphere all give me happy thoughts.
4. No more wsting master work steel bolts at the archery range.
5. Again in the old version you still had to draft people. PLUS, in the new version, far more migrants with military skills join your fortress.
6. Why don't you request job cancelation messages for "Urist Mc Axedwarf cancels training no barrack assigned." Toady does listen to us after all. And could easly add it to the next release with little impact on the SDLC.
Anyways my point is the new system isn't all that different from the old system in terms of making dwarves do things, and where there are differences there is more flexability for customizatig. The new system is great for Micromanaging and forgetting.
Edit: fixed my formatting