1. I've had only about 3 crashes, and I've used it heavily every day since it was released. One (or both) of our experiences is abnormal, so don't draw any conclusions from yours.
2. IE8 needed to be released early as a beta, because it causes breaking changes for many web sites requiring exposure both for web devs to fix their sites and for MS to collect data about what sites don't work.
3. The beta has been out long enough, you can bet there have been fixes for the majority of bugs people have discovered by now. If MS were to announce it was shipping today, I wouldn't be overly concerned that what they shipped was any more buggy than any other new software. (This is evidenced by androidi's post, I believe... this reply is for the entire thread and not just his post.)
4. All indications have been that IE8 will be released with Win7 (as Bass said) and thus won't be released for a while yet. In "upcomming months" is still about a year from now. There's no official date, but the earliest credible guess I've seen is for RTM in October which means actual release in November/December. That's a LOT of time for fixing bugs, especially considering all the time they've had since releasing B2 already. Personally, I'm not sure I buy the October guess... I suspect it will be a month or two later. But it's all speculation from folks who have no real clue (myself incuded).
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