But as for grouping objects for the sake of positioning on screen, I'd say a panel does the job very well.
Unfortunately, I will not use them, they look like crap. This is my ONLY complaint with Blitz Plus though. Other than not having standard frames/groupboxes and having to resort to the old 16bit panel style, I love Blitz Plus. can't picture any EUs deciding not buy an app just because it doesn't use every normal Windows standard.
Call me old fashioned, but I take pride in my work and do not do things halfassed. I have a hard enough time trying to get EUs to swallow the philosophy that they need to install DX just to run a simple application. Luckily Mark has stated that GDI/Software modes are coming which will remedy that.