>Does anyone have any experience with the date field that was added to SQL Server 2008?

What is the question that requires experience? It is a date field (like date only version of datetime).
If you would ask:
-Why you get it back as a character value then I would say my guess would be that you are using and older version's driver.
-If it supports 'empty' no it doesn't, defaults to 1/1/1900.
-Its range, from Jan 1, 1 to Dec 31,9999.
-Accuracy, one day, storage 3bytes.

Nothing else special about it I think.
Cetin