Okay...
Use the save as feature to many files: My Project 001, My Project 002, My Project 003 etc
Backup your projects.
Keep multiple versions of your racks and presets, back them up too. In fact, just keep a backup of your entire "sounds" folder: use
Cobian backup or something, it's worth the trouble (and free).
If Live crashes, send a bug report.
Keep your hardware drivers up to date.
The only criticism I would have is that I feel Ableton
should lower Live's price, IMHO, but otherwise I appreciate the work they've put into fixing 8. I ended up buying it, because I managed to get a good price on it. I've had crashes, I've lost a couple of things here and there. But because I maintain backups and a safe "work ethic" (FFS don't keep saving over the same project file! It's a recipe for disaster!), I've had no major losses. So I would certainly agree that 8 is not close to perfect yet, but some of the ire on this forum is little more than irate angry internet men projecting unjustified hatred, spending more time posting and not
writing some bloody music.
I swore I'd stick with 7, but having moved over to suite 8 I feel it was a good decision. Operator and Analog are, frankly,
excellent synths and I've had a ton of fun programming both. Proper grouping has been
almost worth the upgrade price alone.
I guess the point of this post is to battle against some of the ungrateful sods on this forum. Between the Minus and Partner Instruments packs, we've been given many gigs of free content. There's no real sign of Live 9 yet, and new versions of 8 are still in the works - I've noticed the regular beta updates - so it's clear Ableton are making good on their promise and don't necessarily "owe us" any more. The more pertinent question is
can they keep this up?