In short, yes there are other advantages. If you just want a list, the release announcement is full of goodies. I was really just listing the things I noticed

In short, yes there are other advantages. If you just want a list, the release announcement is full of goodies. I was really just listing the things I noticed when working on one small app. As to features I haven't used, yet... I'm probably most excited about Merb's slices. Slices are potentially a huge win for code organization and re-use across webapps.