It's surely something that bugs me too. I'm glad you brought it up and hopefully it'll gain some attention. Another thing regarding plugins that bothers me is the fact that there is no quick link to plugins page in the "Right Now" box on the Dashboard. There's a quick link for everything else...posts, pages, cats, themes, widgets, etc. How 'bout adding a quick link that says something like: "You have 18 active Plugins".