I agree about the 3D bars but the flash is just flash. It's not something that will halt your system...
They've probably designed the graph system so it will use flash most likely because they can dynamically change the values (maybe it loads the graph data from an xml file) without having to reupdate the images (like the old way) hence why DR said it's a benefit to them.
I suppose if their graph system was AJAX people would still, not moan but be unsatisfied.
What system specs are you running that flash causes to slow down.