Is there any documentation on V3 out there and is anyone actually on the beta? Were using SPS2003 pretty extensivley in our environment however there are features  that were promised in V3 that I have yet to hear about if they actually made it!

Check this out
channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=115383

Ghosting and unghosting  will not be an issue anymore with V3. Feature like Master page  and others will alleviate the need to work with Site Definition. Administrators will be able to customization that previously required using Site Definition using a combination of Master Pages and out of the box feature. In addition unghosted  page will be cached so they will not be a performance hit.

Sorry I can say more as we are now allowed to disclose

Check the following links for publicly available information

blogs.msdn.com/.../467821.aspx

commnet.microsoftpdc.com/content/downloads.aspx

heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/148.aspx#SPV3O12

Here's a summary of stuff I learned about v3 at PDC,

jopx.blogspot.com/.../...nts-in-sharepoint-v3.html

Is there any target date (month or qtr) for V3 to be released?

my *GUESS* is Oct/Nov next year but we may be surprised and see it earlier!

I have to disagree that it won’t be an issue. From what was disclosed so far in blogs & @ the PDC, they have said that unghosting  hasn’t been eliminated… the concept does remain.

With that being said, I do agree with you Daniel that some of the major tasks that were affected by unghosting pages will be mitigated, but ~not~ eliminated. So from what I gather, it won’t be as much of an issue as it is now, but there are still cases where pages can be unghosted  and yield the same challenges we face today.

We’ll prob. get more once the NDAs are mitigated when the product is released in a public beta.

I think that Fitz's Ghosting, Schmosting! post is an optimistic outlook:
blogs.msdn.com/.../467821.aspx

I agree, while unghosting  issues will be mitigated, I don't
think that all issues will be eliminated.