nukeevangelist writes:  

news from the developer at php.net: PHP 5.1 Beta 3 Available [14-Jul-2005] The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.1Beta 3.
If all goes well, this beta release will be followed by a release candidate within a couple of weeks.

Some of the key improvements of PHP 5.1 include:

- PDO (PHP Data Objects) - A new native database abstraction layer providing performance, ease-of-use, and flexibility.
- Significantly improved language performance mainly due to the new Zend Engine II execution architecture.
- The PCRE extension has been updated to PCRE 5.0.
- Many more improvements including lots of new functionality and many bug fixes, especially in regards to SOAP, streams and SPL. See the bundled NEWS file for a more complete list of changes.


Everyone is encouraged to download and test this beta, although it is not yet recommended for mission-critical production use.
Just travel over and read the full release announcement