I imported my wallet, and this new version does work, but it takes a minute to load bitmonerod in the background (maybe give some sort of "loading" indication), and then takes a VERY long time for simplewallet to load the transactions (show a progress bar?). I also noticed an odd error that occurs in the simplewallet log before typing in the password that wasn't there in the past (even though it does finally load once I type in the password and wait for a LONG time):

2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.751935 bitmonero wallet v0.8.8.6-release
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.751935 Setting log level = 0
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.752936 Loading wallet...
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.777937 ERROR C:/bitmonero/contrib/epee/include/storages/portable_storage.h:161 portable_storage: wrong binary format - signature missmatch
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.777937 ERROR C:/bitmonero/src/wallet/wallet2.cpp:570 !r. THROW EXCEPTION: error::invalid_password
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.777937 C:/bitmonero/src/wallet/wallet2.cpp:570:N5tools5error16invalid_passwordE: invalid password
2015-Jan-16 02:27:07.777937 ERROR C:/bitmonero/src/simplewallet/simplewallet.cpp:1352 Wallet initialize failed: invalid password