hi lyle,
in all honesty, i dont know. the last time i had gimp on my machine was quite a while back, so my report on gimpvs wouldnt be a fair comparison of the gimp you're using. actually, i briefly tried gimpshop when it first came out, but not enough to really know the nuts and bolts of it. so, there's really no way i can advise you, having nothing to really compare it to.
i shld have known you'd already be aware of it

so, you can probably tell more from the various stuff said on sourceforge than anything i could tell you about it.
as for integrating with visual studio, i'm not sure. my impression was that it was made, at least in part, FROM visual studio. how much or what, i dont really know. it did run smoothly and cleanly and i was impressed by how full-featured it was. whether that is now true of all gimp versions or not, i dont really know. i played around with it for a bit and still have it installed. things were pretty easy to find and alter, though there were a couple things i didnt like, like the clone tool. Paint Shop Pro's clone is much easier to use, for example. and i found the lack of having the mousewheel as my zoom in and out quite annoying (i do a LOT of zooming, particularly when restoring images).
so, for the most part, even though i somewhat directed this at you, our resident gimp expert, i was mostly just posting to let those that might be interested in knowing there was a new gimp out there and that it looked pretty good.
in fact, YOU'D be the better person to do a comparitive review of the various versions of the gimp, gimpshop and gimpvs, don' cha think?
