Hate to sound like a broken record, but most systems have flaws in them. As a post above correctly identified these flaws are more or less severe depending on the degree to which one is personally affected. Right now, I'm fairly happy with the system overall, but tend to fly only on M-class flight passes and paid long-haul J (e.g., based on my experiences to date I suspect the current system was designed for people with my purchasing behaviour).

Are there frustrations? Yes, for instance, I was waitlisted on a flight to BOS last night for 4 days despite the fact that there J > 5 on a 9 seat plane. Even last night when I flew I was waitlisted until about 4 minutes before I got on the plane, only to find that there were still 3/9 empty J seats. Big problem? No. Annoying? Yes.

Anyway, in my opinion, the current system is better than the previous system for the following reasons:

1.) Increased ease of upgrade and upgrade management
2.) Better transparency over upgrades (maybe its just because I can control the system online)
3.) Increased number of upgrades for me personally
4.) Decreased number of people in J class as a whole
5.) Increased flexibility in use of upgrades -- at my current pace of flying and purchasing I will be hard-pressed to burn all my credits, as will many on this board I suspect. Being able to upgrade family members and not waste credits is actually a huge benefit now for me personally.

Is the system perfect? No. Does it work essentially as we were promised it would work? Yes.