Ok, thanks to cuberiordan I fianlly got it rooted, deleted the chinese apps, deleted the phone.apk (although whiel I was rooting, i did not noticed any excessive battery drain), installed a few apps, and been toying around with it a bit.

Overall it feels more responsive. Benchmarks seem to support that objective comment, since both Antutu and Quadrant are giving me better results than the beta version.

As previously noted, the battery indicator is working now, and the power button needs to be pressed just once to lock the tablet. 

I did noted that the power button needs to be pressed a bit longer to power the tablet on.

WiFi seems somewhat improved. I do get a bit of better reception on my room (used to have 2 bars tops, when lucky, now it stays at three), about 15 feet and two concrete walls from the wifi router.

USB keyboard works perfect, as well as my bluetooth mouse. Play store is not as laggy as it was before (still lags, but not as horribly as it did). 

In "About tablet" it doesn't show "beta version" anymore. 

One big improvement was flipboard, now it's completely smooth (it was a bit laggy and cumbersome in beta version).

HDMI oputput (video and audio) works without a problem (tested it just for a few minutes).

All in all, I must say I'm pleased with this release. IN fact, considering that it's already rooted, I think it's gonna stay on my Cube until such time as the Multi-window release appears (hopefully soon!)

Cheers!

Frank.

How did you root it? All driver instructions suck big time.

KB lag is still very present, making typing a real nightmare. We would all be better off with ipad 1.

Al said
Installed it and have it rooted.   Power button responds with one click, SD card write access, smooth and responsive, WiFi seems more stable and faster   Very happy

Good news. I'll wait until Admin created the new ROM ( rooted, chinese removed, 4Gig of space etc) and test it.