state of the SW universe?

Greetings people.
 ...so, other than the decay of this group to 95% crap posts by jon, cliff

and the clods from alt .machines whats happening with SW these days?

The reason I am asking this in all seriousness is that my old VAR has sent

me a temping offer to rejoin subs again..

Now the first thought that came to me about this is that no-one is getting

into SW08 and they are starving to death..sad...but then again I thought 
this might be something to consider slightly seriously if they are going
to 
bring in substantial penalties for non obedience soon..carrot and stick 
eh?..
(why we should pay to compensate for downturned profits reflecting slowly 
deteriorating releases is just a little galling but..)

Given the reason I got out of subs was mostly to do with the 2000+ per 
release bug farce and the groom and control your customers bull**** how is

SW08 actually?

The new UI is a turn off but how has the serious surfacing been with it? 
speed generally?

My thought was actually I might rejoin subs but wait until the final sp to

use it or - skip using 08 all together with 09 the actual target available

during the subs year...but... then again I read beta will be very short
this 
time which is not at all encouraging

Any thoughts from serious users out there about the state of the SW
universe 
at this time is welcome.
Neil