What's up with the Make Joint building tool in 2006?

Ive been back over all the "Joint" threads in the archive trying to figure out how to use the darn things. There are posts from 2004 saying they just dont work and that when we have "Havok 2" things will be better. That was two years ago... did we get "Havok 2"?
Are Joints working now?
Is there a good tutorial on how to use them?
has anyone created a successfulk build recently that used joints?
Can anyone Help?

Joints are a well-meaning addition to the build menu, but in practice they are very hard to use successfully. This does owe to the fact that they are in fact physically simulated, which has its own problems.

At this point, until Linden Lab bumps up to another version of Havok, or looks closely at how they implement this 'hinge' kind of simulation, you're best off treating it as a curious anomaly - not a serious building block.

I hope this helps you avoid some frustration.

Hinges are an integral part of weapons that kill sims though physics overload.

And a friend once made a greeting card the user could open up using physics dragging.. although it helped a lot if you did so close to <0,0,0> so you didn't have to walk far when it teleported away.