Doug:
I'm of the same opinion about upgrades and new versions (again, as you say, Softrak being the exception).
I can't count the number of people who have had problems because they installed, for example, Simply Accounting's newest release in December when they could have avoided most of the problems by waiting until the inevitable service pack is released in January.
BTW, I think there have been unannounced changes to Windows XP since the first release because some of he problems that occurred at that time do not seem to be happening on newly-installed versions.