I nodded when I read E's comment, just as I reeled when I read you describing new windows as a UX improvement. I don't believe in taking away users' control over their own web browsing experience.
There's contention over this, for sure, so let me finish telling you the experience I had on this site which prompted this post. I came here from Drupal Planet, didn't notice the link had opened a new tab. Got to the end of the comments (your response to E), muttered my disagreement :), and then hit Alt-backarrow to go back in history. No response. Moment's confusion, annoyance … ah, new tab, bingo. A minor annoyance in the scheme of things but don't we live by "Don't make me think"? I wasn't feelin' the UX love.