Linden Lab Release New Viewer

'Unveiling An Improved New Resident Experience


One of the things we've been working hard on here at Linden Lab, as M pointed out in his  New Year post, is the new Resident experience in Second Life.


Today, we're proud to announce an important step forward as we continue to improve the welcome experience for new Residents; it's a more streamlined introduction to our online world, one that is simple, linear, and integrated with Viewer 2.  Our primary goal is to make Second Life more welcoming for new Residents, because more new Residents means more opportunity for merchants, landowners, creators--and for the whole ecosystem that is Second Life. However, Viewer 2 isn't just for new Residents. It also delivers a better, more intuitive user experience for all of us and gives everyone in Second Life the capability to integrate web-based media seamlessly into Second Life--a huge leap forward. And, what may not be immediately apparent--but equally  important--it provides us a robust and flexible platform to build on; we have much more goodness planned to roll out in 2010 and beyond.
Key points:
Second Life Welcome Island and Second Life Discovery Island
New Starter Avatars
Updated Terms of Service
Updated Maturity Ratings
Second Life Viewer 2 in Registration Flow'

Read the full post HERE

Reading through the entire post it seems aimed more at new residents and the Lindens actually point out that many testers experienced in SL have had difficulties adapting and basically completely relearning how to use Secondlife.
So looks like the long suffering residents will have to wait that little bit longer for all the bug fixes and better search etc that we have all been asking for for so long, of course we can expect bug fixes for the new viewer will take priority over little things like that as of course the new residents have no idea how Linden lab works and will expect the best service.
Luckily for now the update IS optional ;)
Dana