1) No. Too many problems reported. Waiting for next patch.
2) No. Can't play since patch.
3) No. I uninstalled it. (uninstalled/installed original game)
4) Yes. Works fine
5) Yes but it's buggy.
Although I'm stuck playing in 1024x768 res until they fix the black rectangle bug, the patch is a good change overall.
The change in research speeds is very significant to the early game and I actually anticipate seeing the year 2000 from now on. I'm not 100% convinced they got all the cost balance tweaks right but it's a better game than before.