I recently left a small company where we were writing .NET MVC apps using LINQ2SQL for data access to take a new position. Here they are still using web forms and an in house written ORM, but are looking to move to MVC and possible LINQ2SQL here in the near future. I personally liked everything about LINQ2SQL except for the problems you run into when you make changes to a table (adding a column or something) and having to regenerate the dbml file everytime. 

1) Has that issue already been worked out or does anyone know if Microsoft is planning on resolving that issue?

2) If we were going to use something other than LINQ2SQL here for our new data access layer, what would everyone's suggestions be?