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Good news for those that have used the MS Application Blocks before...the Enterprise Library appears to be ready for prime-time.  One nice change is the addition of a GUI for configuration, vs. the previous hand-coded XML.  Here's a summary:

The application blocks that comprise the Enterprise Library are the following:

• Caching Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate a local cache in their applications.
• Configuration Application Block. This application block allows applications to read and write configuration information.
• Data Access Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate standard database functionality in their applications.
• Cryptography Application Block. This application block allows developers to include encryption and hashing functionality in their applications.
• Exception Handling Application Block. This application block allows developers and policy makers to create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
• Logging and Instrumentation Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate standard logging and instrumentation functionality in their applications.
• Security Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate security functionality in their applications. Applications can use the application block in a variety of situations, such as authenticating and authorizing users against a database, retrieving role and profile information, and caching user profile information.

I personally haven't been very fond of the Application Blocks.  We tried several of them in various applications and found them to be either overly complex, too unstable, or feature poor...and in most cases either found a good alternative or if there weren't any, then I wrote my own.  I haven't tried the Enterprise Library release, but hopefully they were able to address those issues.

For those of you that share the same sentiments (not real crazy about the Application Blocks), I'm close to releasing my own alternative (Adapdev.NET), which provides pretty much the same functionality, but is built on several-leading open-source frameworks (such as Nini, log4net, etc.).  In my opinion its simpler, and it currently serves as the core of Zanebug, Codus, and some of my other apps...it's just a matter of documenting it before I release it.  Stay tuned!