As a followup, I just installed the latest version of Helix Gnome. All I can say is neet (or wow). The installation procedure was excellent. Just load any WM (I chose AnotherLevel), then use lynx (yes lynx, the text browser) to grab the installer source and away you go. The graphical install is very clean, pretty, and extremely easy. The default configuration of Helix is sweeeet. And the best part, all of the Gnome apps that you usually get have been patched to be stable and to work how they are supposed to (yes, even GAIM, GICU, and GNapster).
The only downside, no Kdevelop. =( The only dev package it comes with is Glade.

j