My time continues to be eaten up by something I cannot discuss yet. I am seeking permission to make an announcement...
I'm running VS2008 Beta 2 in a non VM environment now. So far there's only been one crash and the performance is acceptable though not as fast as VS2005 runs for me right now. I am working on a WPF application right now and I have to say so far I greatly prefer the designer from the August CTP of Expression Blend 2 to the WPF designer in VS2008.