OK, I can understand your position. I was reading fast and missed the stuff you quoted, my bad, but good to know there's at least a discount.
Here's a concern that's more on the technical side - does Core work better than the Plugin? When I started with the 3.2 plugin I noticed a lot of issues, many of which were fixed with 3.3, and I've kinda gotten used to the ones that were left - reset line modify markers in the left margin doesn't work, help in dialog boxes doesn't work, the pushed bookmark stack sometimes gets corrupted or otherwise goes flaky and I can't get back to the beginning, clicking any of the other Eclipse views often causes the cursor in the editor view to get reset to the top of the first buffer in the list, and a few others. The Plugin isn't perfect, but it was becoming a mature product. I'm concerned that if I switch to Core, I'll be back to dealing with an immature product and taking a step back in terms of functionality or stability. If Core truly is an improvement over the Plugin (and if so, how is it better?), I'll consider switching now, or soon. But if it's still getting the kinks ironed out of it, I'll wait 'til it's more mature. It has to be a step forward or it's not worth it, regardless of the cost.
-will