If you really miss the old "Control Panels" folder, you can (more or less) recreate it using the dock. Simply navigate in the GUI to the /System/Library folder, and then drag the "Preferences" folder onto the right end of the dock.
Control click on the folder, and you get direct access to each the system prefs! Thanks to the X4U mailing list for this one...
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010330091312816