Regarding the gas problem some people have when they strat a new round, I have noticed that the latest version of mist (0.72) seems to calculate the cost correctly and works everytime, at least for me.
Dustbluster are your using the last one ?
That makes sense. Good to know
I haven't updated to the latest release yet because I saw reports that it sometimes hangs due to it's new event log getting overwhelmed by activity on The DAO. I expect there'll be a patch for that soon and I'll update then.