Fascinating post. Amazing amount of action on this in the last 24 hours.
In one office I have 5.0.29 - internet went down, took almost 1 minute for the prescription writer to load. That was worse than the early beta versions of 6. When internet returned, it was back to the races.
In the other office I use 6.0.8. Never saw the need to go to 0.9 or 10. I might when it comes to MU. Illinois (medicaid) stated they probably won't be paying out until Feb 2012 although you can register. Speed is OK with 6.0.8.
A lot of people have no speed problems, others like Bert have a tremendous amount of problems. I had them at first (6.0.4, I think) but not in the later itinerations. I did upgrade hardware however (less than $500 for 4 computers) to used dual cores. Interestingly, my P4 machines work at OK speeds with the tweaks spelled out in the board. Could have held out that $500.
The bottom line is: Does the speed hit exceed the potential reimbursement for MU? If you are not going to MU there is no reason to go to V6 (well, maybe some improvements, but mostly, no)
If you are going for MU then the other issue is will the problems be corrected with better hardware, and should you pony up first? This did not work for Bert, but did work for me (probably his video cards cost more than all my upgrades ;))Truly I can't address those questions. I am thinking abot moving to 6.0.10 this weekend and will be prepared to reverse it all IFF there is a significant speed hit.
Wendell Pediatrician in Chicago
The patient's expectation is that you have all the answers, sometimes they just don't like the answer you have for them
