The first 2.2.3 alpha release (what's this?) is now available here.
To paraphase the well-known CEO of a small technology company, this release is all about "Optimizations! Optimizations! Optimizations!" You'll have to insert your own mental image of me dancing around the office like a monkey boy 
This release has got optimizations coming out the wazoo, incorporating a lot of what we discovered from feedback on the experimental build (many thanks to everyone who participated in that) and a few more for good measure. Awasu simply flies now, plus I've got a couple more things I want to add in future releases 
Having said that, while we can do performance testing and time critical operations to the nano-second until our eyes bleed, at the end of the day it's about the user experience so feedback on your take of Awasu's performance would be appreciated.
Of course, we can't provide screenshots of Awasu running significantly faster so I made one little UI change to the status bar so that this announcement wouldn't look so drab 
Have fun y'all
I am a 
Incredible. Less than 10 minutes ago I was thinking, "Maybe I'll contact that Awasu guy and suggest that he add information about what is downloading." One adjustment I'd suggest would be instead of "Updating 251 channels..." to show "Updated 42 of 251 channels..."
Not content with having the fastest support response on the planet, we now can implement feature requests even before they are asked for!
The figure currently shown is the number of channels waiting to be updated. "Updated 42 of 251 channels" doesn't quite work since not all of your 251 channels may be due for an update at that time. Also, only having the one number in the message makes it easier to grok when just glancing at it. You just wait for it to count down to zero.
The real motivation behind this change was so that I could tell when it was OK to unplug my laptop after doing an "update all"