Well that is a remarkable improvement!
This VA unofficial version is responsive while my profile is brilliantly ongoingly failing to access the web service that I deliberately turned off.
I'm running VA with no startup values defined.
It's window doesn't turn white, I can minimize, maximize and drag the window around the desktop, even enter Options.
At no point does Windows ask me to close the program.
And it doesn't wait 30s to return the 'Unable to get value from URI - The operation has timed out.' log message.
Much closer to under 3s.
A deserving 'Woot!' from me!