Mac OS 8.5 is coming shortly, folks; and it looks like a winner. The 
"flash" is there with the appearance stuff, but more important (to me 
anyway) is the greatly increased speed on PowerMacs. (More PPC-native 
code, some G3 specific stuff.) The file system and networking have been 
particularly improved. (MacAddict has a decent overview, I'm sure 
MacWorld will have more depth next week.) From another list;

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> Allegro networking speed....
> Courtesy an anonymous reader:
>
> I've been using 8.5b2, and wanted to test it's network copy improvements, 
> after seeing the Macworld keynote. I set up a test to see how true it is
> in the build.
>
> I created at .sit file of 100.4 MB. I copied it three ways to tell the 
> difference. All tests were using G3/300 with F/W SCSI, and lots of RAM.
>
> Over 8.1, the same file copy took 3min 42sec.
>
> In 8.5:
> To NT 4.0: 42sec To 8.5 (Appletalk): 1min 32 sec To 8.5 
> (Appleshare IP 6, TCP): 14sec !!
> That means a rate of 60 MBits/sec! The highest our network engineer has
> seen is 30 MBits/sec from an NT. 60 MBits/sec is close to the theoretical
> maximum of 100baseT. I ran the last test off RAM disks, because my F/W
> was becoming the bottleneck! Finally.
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Another comment:
>BTW, short of a few annoying glitches, b2 is very usable.  Much more stable
>than the TI installation of Windows95.... ;-)  Looks like a tested release
>compaired to w98!
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And finally, the Java stuff is greatly improved in 8.5 - the speed is now 
_very_ competitive with the best Windows implementations, with more 
improvements to come. (Although I still think Java is more hype than 
substance, it's gradually getting better....)

Bill