what version is the alpha at right now just out of curiosity.. and is final the bext step after beta 11?

How could anyone possibly know when the final release will be without having tested it? Regardless of what the alpha team has, is there any point in calling a release "final" until it's gone through beta test?

With all the bugs that have popped up in each new release, I am not optimistic that the next beta release will be a production-quality final release. Especially considering the random lockup/UI freeze bug has, to my knowledge, not been solved yet. They can choose to name any release "final" but what we really want is a release that's as stable as 1.03, regardless of whether it's called "beta" or not. That looks like it might be a while...

I'm kinda curious too. I remember when we were all chanting for 2.00b8 and they gave us 11! It was a way of letting us know that they had quite busy while we were all impatiently awaiting.