I have an icon on the start menu at Programs>Python 2.6>Pythonwin. Of course I had to hack the Explorer filetypes to set the edit paths properly for .py files, but I have to do that in every training course since 9.1 for all the students.
I am still annoyed at the install hijacking the Python 2.6 install directory with another level under C:\Python26\ArcGIS9.4\ . Yuck! a full stop in a directory path? How non-standard is that?
This apparently does not happen if Python 2.6 is already installed, so perhaps Python should be installed before ArcGIS, as a prerequisite just like .NET. Then apparently we get ArcGIS to respect the normal structure. I will give it a try to see if I can defeat the odd behaviour at Beta 2 by installing Python again first.