Running 4.5rc1beta1 (4.4.80-2.2) and quicklaunch has lost some functionality - I can no longer specify the number of icons to display. Are others seeing this in their distro?

[edited] changed rc1 to beta1

I suppose you mean Beta 1? Jokes aside, I can see the behavior you mention, but I don't know if it's intentional or not.

That was considered a poor approach, so it has been changed. To get the same basic effect, go to the quicklaunch settings and check "show popup". Click the green arrow, then drag the icons you want to the popup. To set which icons appear in the popup and which appear in the main area, just drag from one to the other. So you still have the popup, but instead of having to worry about how many icons to show or hide and play around with the ordering to get things the way you want, now individual icons belong explicitly to either the widget or to the popup. So you won't get icons jumping back and forth as you add and remove them, they won't move from one to the other unless you explicitly tell them to.

The quicklaunch widget has been pretty much totally revamped for 4.5. Besides the visible changes there have been massive changes under the hood.