Just some minor things I noticed:

• Observing the progress window during a File & Folder backup, the text immediately above the green progress bar says "Overall Progress: xx%", followed by a status description -- but in this case, the status never changed from "Determining which files to copy" to subsequent tasks, even though the subsequent activities (copying files, etc.) were clearly occurring, and the log file was being updated accordingly.  So it's just that status message immediately above the progress bar that wasn't being properly updated.
• When creating a new backup job, if I advance to the "Edit the Plan" screen and the click "Back" to return to the "Add the Folders" screen, the notice "The Image ID is recommended for the file name prefix" appears at the bottom of the screen, even though the Backup Set File Name Prefix is already checked.  Opening and closing the "Advanced Options" clears this notice.  In case it makes a difference for reproducing/fixing this issue, my Reflect installation uses the registry edit to convert the {IMAGEID} to {IMAGESETDATE}.

                                

About that 2nd one, that may be a regression from an issue I brought up during the beta testing.  I believe I commented something about that line of text being problematic early on in the v8 beta.

The "Image ID is recommended" line was still problematic (in a different way) when I first installed the publicly released version of v8 -- it would sometimes get displayed on the second screen ("Edit the Plan"), obscuring some of the information on that screen.  I was going to mention this in my OP, but I can no longer reproduce this condition, so I assume it got fixed in one of the patches.  

                                

That was similar to what I encountered during the beta testing.  The Image ID is recommended line would overlap a checkbox option, meaning it couldn't be selected.

Interesting -- I definitely saw something like that in v8.0.5963 (I think it happened when I entered and exited Advanced Options). 

Just curious, are you able to reproduce issue #2 from my OP (or issue #1, for that matter)?

                                

I just replicated #2 in the list but not #1.  As to #1, Transfer rate followed by a value should immediately follow Determining Files To Copy.  Although, the Determining part did stay on the screen for a bit even while files were being added to the backup file set.

#1 could just be a delay, then.  The backup I was doing was fairly small in size, so it was probably finished before there was time to refresh the status message from "Determining Files to Copy" to the next step in the process.  I was attempting to manually time the writing phase (to get a better idea of my real write speeds)  so I had my eyes peeled on that status message -- I noticed that the log window was updating, but the "Determining Files to Copy" status line remained above the status bar until the backup and verification were complete.

                                

For a baseline, I ran the same F&F backup twice.  The first run took 34 seconds to complete and the second run took 35.  So, if your backup is running longer than that, depending on the time, there could be a lot of files being backed up.  The Determining Files message may be "stuck" because it took so long to determine how many files?

In your short 34-35 sec backups, were you able to see the status message change from "Determining Files to Copy" to writing (or whatever comes next normally)?

                                

In my most recent incremental F&F backup (64 sec), I briefly saw the status message change from "Determining Files to Copy" to "Closing VSS" just before the job ended.  In the meantime, the main log window was being updated with entries indicating "Deleting Files from backup", "Copying Files", "Saving cluster information", "Saving Index", "Verifying", and "Retention Rules", but while this information was being written live into the log window, the status message above the progress bar remained at "Determining Files to Copy" until the very end, when "Closing VSS" appeared for a second or two before the completion notice popped up.

So perhaps Reflect is just being selective about what status updates are shown in the message above the progress bar?