For those of you who are still sitting on the fence regarding WLM9 Beta, Liveside.net offers a very comprehensive comparison between WLM8.5 and 9
here.
It's been 5 days or so since I had this latest WLM9 Beta installed, and I'm pleased to report no major bugs so far, barring the custom emotes issue (whereby you can can insert one of your own custom emotes into your window and it doesn't show. But your contact
will see it in his or her conversation window).