I have been testing plugins which seem to work great as long as you read the directions. I've only had a few problems with installing through the plugin manager, but in those cases just extracting the package manually seems to work.

I designed a theme for a test site and branded this site with my old logo by modifying the khatru theme. Theming seems to be pretty smooth, but there doesn't seem to be a clear standard for e107 theming. I was hoping to avoid this, but I think it's just the nature of web programming in general. I think the e107 community is actually working towards a theming standard from a few posts I read at the e107 main site.

Plugins of note:

Great! -> Coppermine Version 1.3.5 + a link plugin to make it show up properly in the plugin manager.

Needs Work -> Zina Version 0.12.x.1 this one seems to have a lot of features, but wasn't really just a straight up audio streaming plugin which is more of what I'm looking for.

Awesome! -> Links Page Version 1.12 enough said.

Awesome! -> Newsfeeds Version 2.0 enough said.

Themes of note:

khatru
Version 1.0

kubrick
Version 1.0

ndb_saloon (this is the theme I've been working on)
Version 0.5

Overall e107 is still a pretty cool CMS after getting my hands a little dirty with it.

3WR development has now been relaunched as a real development site. e107 seems to fit the bill for a good CMS. Enough advanced features to handle just about anything. I will be concentrating on theming so I can offer some free themes for download at some point and maybe submit one to the first theme design contest. Wish me luck...