I made my own sample, linking with the libraries I'd built (console app) and it seemed to hang the application, so no go with 1.6 and 2010 I guess.
I'd rather say no go with 1.6 and ATI. Static linking should solve your problem.
I'm not sure I want to go through the pain of command-line building with the current 2.0 version
There's no "command-line" building if you don't want it. You can use a graphical front-end to CMake, and then generate projects for your favorite EDI instead of makefiles.
Read the tutorial
so my question is simply is there a release date for 2.0
There's no release date, SFML 2.0 will be released when it's ready.
It's not a commercial product so why should I choose an arbitrary release date that will most likely not be met?
All I can tell you is that I'm working hard to release it soon -- hopefully before the end of the year.
including .sln for VS 2010?
There will be nothing else distributed than CMake makefiles, since from them one can generate everything else -- that's the point of using CMake