Haven't been following Ellaism for quite a long time, not sure what's the team is working at right now.
Is there a stable standalone wallet for Windows for me to use? I don't trust MEW that much, to be honest...
You can try official ellaism wallet
https://github.com/ellaism/shell/releasesDoes it require gigabytes of free hard-drive space to store the whole chain locally? Sorry for asking this but I'm quite limited space-wise
I assume you want to run a full node. Using parity i have a full node using 4gb for the blockchain database. I had a full node based on geth on a 20gb virtual private server and had to stop it due to lack of space.
Also it will support wasm (Web Assembly...) and other improvements. AFAIK Parity currently is the better choice to be compatible with the upcoming features (
https://ellaism.org/news-update/).
Useful information for getting started with Ellaism node based on Parity can be found here:
https://wiki.ellaism.org/clients/parity