Would you do a major project in LR4 right now? (looking for feedback - I am not ranting)...

Question

I have a major project this week where over 6 days I wil need to generate a couple of hundred keepers and produce slide show from them for an incentive trips awards banquet. I am not interested or concerned about using LR4 or LR3 for the slide show, I have a seperate workflow in FC7. The photos also upon my return to states are also posted to a photo sharing site for the members of the incentive trip to download for their personal use. This puts a premium of on metadata and keywording.
I am an enthusiast shooting Olympus E-5 and have used LR4 since the Beta to process some weekend projects. I have found that Process 2012 is, as promised is much better at dealing with highlights and shadows and prefer how the process deals with ORF files. Much truer colors with less tweaking. For whatever reason, Process 2010 never has dealt as well as my taste would like with the E-5's RAW files. Never hd this issue with my previous 4/3 Oly bodies. Needess to say LR 4 for my needs was/is a big hit with me so far.
My apprehension is if it is wise to create a 3000 plus image catalog over one week in LR4 Beta, betting that the catalogs will migrate to LR 4 1.0 when the Beta is over. And if there are bugs I have not encountered that would slow me down so much that the reduced work in tweaking RAWs in LR4 versus LR3 would not be worth it? (note- I have been doing redudant saves of the RAW files with my smaller projects but potentially losing as big a catalog as this project takes would be a pain even ifI had redudant original RAW. This is BTW work I am doing that while not "professionally" it is for my employer."
I am seeking opinions here because I am really on the fence. Be gentle those of you who are far more experienced in these matters than I am.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Cheers
Katz

Answer 1

But, I'd give it a go, knowing the concequences.
I put small shoots through, my racehorses in training and some more basic shoots, I've run a couple of magazine shoots through LR4.
Rob Cole and others have commented that there may be issues getting whites to white for deep etching, so a product shoot against a white background may be an issue.
I have a complex workflow for my mainstream clients, so that still goes through LR3. To stack, set white balances and export to TIFF, to enblend bracketted images and import the resultant TIFFS back to LR3, make the web gallery courtesy of theturninggate and then present that to my clients
Their chosen images then have the meta data written to them, and are exported as a catalog to a separate hard drive - to maintain the same folder structure  so I can import them back into the catalog when LR4 final has imported my LR3 catalog. and these exported TIFFS are imported into LR4 and the meta data added, and all the edits done here.
As a professional I want to go back to the backup RAW images, but I do have frequent catalog backups, and I'm loving the LR4 improvements. I can get results far faster with the beta than with LR4, I am using the library, map, develop and web, I've never used the slideshow, I dont make books, and I've still not unpacked my fabulous Canon printer since I arrived in Cape Town 4 years ago.
However as most of the reviews of LR4 have indicated, there are very few changes to web and the library does not seem to do much more than it used to.
Yes I get crashes several times a day, but not once has LR4 told me it was having to "repair" the catalog, it just opens and I have to find the last catalog I was working on. The time taken for LR4 to apologise and contact Adobe is so little, that the time I save in editing 10 photos more than covers that crash 3 times.
However, I do back up my catalog several times a day.
Victoria, Hal, etc are correct, not a chance is the sensible option, as its a beta and with a new pipeline, process and prowess, and with bugs to iron out, and the beta catalog could crash and corrupt and you'd need to open a backup catalog, or it could even break the sidecars, or the metadata in the DNG files.
Re Hals comment that LR final may not read all the beta catalogs data correctly, that is an issue. But i've tweaked many images from LR3.x to LR4 already and 99% of my images go to clients and then can be thrown after they've received the final images. (Why should I store their photos? Its up to them to backup, I simply cant offer a storage service)
As for personal images, how many people go back to images 6 months to years later and fiddle a little? I do, so a tweak to make it LR4 final from LR4 beta is not an issue.
JUST SAY NO FOLKS, it may be nice, but its dangerous.