At first, it felt slower, but it was just a matter of adjusting my usage pattern. With the old crankset, I spent 95% of my time in the middle chainring, and with a 32-tooth chainring, you really need to wind it out to get much speed out of it, but that's obviously not what you want to do.

The 22-tooth ring on a 44/32/22 crankset really is a true granny gear, meant only to be used as a bail out for very steep climbs, steeper than anything you're likely to meet on a commute. So I had to start thinking of this setup more like a compact double.

Now, I start out from a stop in the 32T gear, but shift almost immediately to the 44T. The net effect is, instead of spending 95% of my time in a 38T gear, I spend 95% of my time in a 44T gear, which ends up being faster on average. (That is, I push myself a little more.)

I got the 44/32/22 setup because I intend to use the bike almost exclusively as a mountain bike in the summer. If I had been planning to use it as a pure commuter, the 48/36/26 might have been the way to go, though that would still have been a step down in the middle ring and not necessarily what I wanted.

Incidentally, I also use a 12-25 or 12-27 cassette for commuting, and that makes the acceleration ramp much smoother and so the bike feels faster.