-I hear the battery life gives between 6-8 hours--would you say this is accurate from your experiences?  I also hear I should only charge from a PC or I'd get overheating issues.

In my experience the battery lasts closer to 10-12 hours and the only thing that really drains it is playing a lot with the A320 via the TV. I charge via a wall charger and have no problems but I use a travel adaptor set for an ipod rather than the shipped charger (which I hear is very poor quality.)

-Would you say playing GBA roms on it would be on par with playing GBA games on a GBA-SP?  Would I be able to play regular gameboy games on its GBA emulator?

As far as I can tell the GBA emu/roms are 100% There is also a GB emu but I don't have enough GB games to give a proper judgement on it's quality.

-Is there any chance a better SNES emulator will come out for it that doesn't require installing Dingux (which I hear is dangerous)?

It's constantly being requested so maybe one day there will be a better native SNES emu, I haven't been able to get Dingux running due to card corruption issues so I can't truely comment on the risks involved but I hear that there is nothing that can go wrong using Dingux that can't be put right.

-The shoulder buttons look really tiny and hard to get to, yet none of the reviews I've seen seem to have a problem with them.  Are they really a problem, or do they just take a little getting used to?

Yes they are a little awkward but really not a problem (even with a silicon protective glove on the A320 they are still usable.)

-How much of a headache can I expect from this?  For instance, should I expect performance issues to crop up over time?

This is a grey area. I ordered mine from dingoo-digital-usa and they did all the hard work of setting things up for me and I've not tried to change or add or remove anything since I got it so as far as I'm concerned there was no headache and I have seen no performance issues. But I know this isn't the case for everybody. My best advice is to read everything you can before you try to play around with anything.

-How good is the sound quality?

From the speakers the sound is kind of tiny (as I would expect from any small, budget electronic device) via headphones or a TV it is very good.

 The music player is very good there are several different EQ's to choose from also there are virtual sound fields eg.concert hall large room, small room, you can choose to shuffle repeat one repeat all or play in oder also you can play music in the background while going through the other menus, as for the GBA emu. it works very well some of the newer games lag in some spots but nothing major and i havent had alot of problems out of the snes emu either most games i have tried play well the megaman series has given me truoble though i hope this helps.