Microsoft has forced the removal of the leaked files which is good as they are still in beta and the NDA should never have been breached but I have installed them after grabbing them from Connect last night.
Initial impressions are good.
File operation performance is significantly improved. In a very unscientific test I performed the same file copy and had the results below. Both copies were done after a reboot and letting the PC idle and involved copying a 700MB ISO image from one physical drive to another.
Before patches:
Calculating estimated time showed for 15 seconds during the actual copy. It changed to the actual countdown with 5 seconds remaining.
After patches:
Calculating estimated time showed for no more than a second and then changed instantly to the normal countdown.
Mark one up to the fixes.
When using the Windows Energy screen saver in the past (I normally use Aurora) I had noticed that it would take a few seconds to return to the desktop and redraw the screen - the patches claim to fix this. Sure enough, reverting from the screen saver is now instant.
Another benefit I have noticed - which isn't specifically in the fix list but could be related to better memory handling - is with Windows Media Player.
I had been experiencing some issues with audio "popping" while WMP was running in the background - I presumed it was a driver issue and the fact that I'm using onboard audio rather than a dedicated card. Since installing the patches this no longer seems to be happening.
So far, so good!