As expected, the developers behind the WordPress project have released a beta version of WordPress 2.8.1 release.
WordPress 2.8.1 is expected to arrive in the coming days. It is mostly a bug fix edition.
WordPress 2.8 was a major update that was launched after a series of beta and RC editions.
Some of the major issues that are fixed in the Beta 1 edition of WordPress 2.8.1:
Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.