its funny, Thom gives the kind of support you probably cant or wont get anywhere else, Personal & Direct Support as opposed to the silly ticket systems offered by the big boys and gets called to the carpet for it.
I've usually received personal and complete answers to any problems I've had with aw2k within 24 hours, not a canned answer but solutions from the developer himself.
Yes it might be nice if there was a more active community around aw2k, but like you said, there is no better desktop solution and it works as does the support.
the one failing of aw2k might be that it doesnt have the popular 'image' some solutions do, but if it works as good or better, we as customers dont need to worry about that.