the most important fix is the default transaction fee, which is raised to 0.0005/kb if it is below.
0.8.2 Release notes
Fee Policy changes
The default fee for low-priority transactions is lowered from 0.0005 BTC
(for each 1,000 bytes in the transaction; an average transaction is
about 500 bytes) to 0.0001 BTC.
Fee Policy changes
The default fee for low-priority transactions is lowered from 0.0005 BTC
(for each 1,000 bytes in the transaction; an average transaction is
about 500 bytes) to 0.0001 BTC.
I'm confused
the problem is that it takes time for this policy to be adopted by miners.
in the meantime, lots of users of Electrum have reported very long confirmation times, so I decided to play it safe.