I've ridden the new spot and I'd go for that, hands down.
When you mash on the pedals on most suspension bikes, you just bog down. You may not realize it, you may think your bike pedals "well" under most conditions, but trust me, when you ride the DW link you realize what is supposed to happen, you can MASH the pedals, accelerate forward like mad, and the suspension still works. It's simply the best compramise to date. On other bikes the suspension either stiffens a whole lot, bogs down (the bike "bobs" some, but mainly it just doesn't shoot forward) and you just don't accelerate, or it's a combination of the two. I've owned mostly horst-link bikes, but ridden everything else, and working for a Giant dealer I got to ride Giant's Maestro system, which is similer to the DW link. The DW link is even better than Giant's system, but the bottom line is that it's the first real improvement IMO in a long time. VPP can have some of the good acceleration traits of DW, but is going to have more suspension stiffening, horst links (like ellsworth) are going to bog down more when you try and mash on the pedals, high single pivots may pedal well but the suspension action will be poor, and low pivots will bob/bog a lot when you try to mash on the pedals.
I'd been a believer in the DW link before I ever rode the spot, due to the Giants and Iron Horse bikes I've ridden, but the spot was very good. 5.5" of travel feels like more due to how well it sucks up square-bumps. One of the first bikes I feel that can run an air shock and not really give up anything compared to good coil-equipped bikes. This is mainly because the DW link can run only enough compression damping to deal with the bumps. Every other bike on the market needs to run more compression damping to deal with weight-transfer from your pedaling forces.
The only negatives of the DW link are in certain executions, like the old iron horse bikes that had poorly designed pivots/linkages (DW didn't design the bike, only the suspension kinematics), or the IBIS design which isn't nearly as rigid as the turner 5spot or pivot cycles designs.
I've always believed a bike like the 5spot is what 90% of the people should ride, in terms of suspension travel, bike traits, strength, etc. It's not cheap so 90% of the people won't be riding it, but the test ride confirmed my belief that it's one of the best all-around bikes.