Stable vs. Unstable

[T. Howell-Cintron]

I'm an avid supporter of open source software and was quite content when
I discovered GnuCash, as I'd previously managed my finances by.. eh..
stashing my money in my pillow case.  I use Windows for certain business
applications and decided to start my foray in to GnuCash there.  Despite
the warnings about 2.3.x being unstable it was the first one I found and
the easiest to download, so that's what I went with.

It wasn't until I tried to load my GC data on my Fedora Linux machine
that I fully realized the implications of what I had done.  The RPM for
GnuCash was 2.2.9, and it won't read data files from 2.3.x, so I sat
back and considered the situation - I had backed myself in to a corner
and now I'm unsure of what to do.

I've had a few spurious crashes with 2.3.5 but for the most part haven't
had any real problem with it.  I don't mind testing software but I'm a
little concerned that since it's still in development the data schema or
other aspects of the software may change, and I'll have to start all my
work from scratch.  (That would be a Very Bad Thing.)

I back up my data daily.  I verify every transaction at least twice.  I
reconcile when it's appropriate to do so.  I feel like I do all that I
can do to prevent catastrophic failure, but again I'm worried that no
matter what precautions I take I'll still wind up with unusable data.

So my question is this - I'm content using 2.3.x because it works for me
and I've already invested a lot of time setting up accounts and the like
but am I putting myself in great danger?  Should I export my data as XML
 and downgrade to 2.2.9 and hope that it imports properly?

Any feedback would be much appreciated..

-- Tom