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. Hopefully it will make it into 0.9.
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that's good news. thanks for the other facts, too."coin control / less change / refactor coin selection" - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/1017
For a popular feature, nobody was willing to take the effort required to address problems with it, until very recently (too late for 0.. Hopefully it will make it into 0.9.[...]
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Sounds like I need to get around to spinning a 0.8-based next-test release, though...
+1 
About coin control
It obviously is about privacy. As somebody pointed out above it shows everybody how bitcoin addresses get all linked together if you are not careful.
In bitcoin-qt it is an option that is deactivated by default. Also bitcoin-qt is no good for newbies.