I completely feel you on b. I always have a set of various folders opened and even with shortcuts it's a pain in the ass to reopen them all (because what's open depends on what I'm doing).
It didn't have to be this way. Linux and UNIX desktop environments used to excel at session management and restoration, but if you can even find the option anymore in your desktop environment of choice, it rarely keeps all of the state from all of the apps you would want.