The Second Life Herald has a very interesting, but also opiniated, piece about the last town hall meetingearlier this week with Cory Linden. To put it simple: the writer was not impressed at all and thinks that the Lindens are working on the wrong priorities right now.
One thing I agree is, that we still need to see how this often referred next generation architecture is going to work. One of the main problems of SL is load, big, heavy user load. This is something you cannot get on the beta grid, where perhaps maximum 100 avatars are online at the same time. This is something you get either with automated test clients - lots of them on the beta grid, or on the main grid. Since automated test clients don't behave like humas do, the real beta grid is the main grid. The beta grid is just there to iron out the real big problems you can already see there, but the rest is only going to be visible on the main grid under heavy user load. It's that simple.
Back in the good old days of the home computers we had a term covering such software: banana software. This term was used for still green software, that came green to the customers and matured there. SL is a unique approach and therefore some things are just like that, when a new version comes out, the real test is the usage of the client on the main grid. You've got to live with it or leave it. Your choice.