Hi Peter,
you could have a look at the issues filed after 2012-12-17 (release date of 0.8.3) to see what happened since then.
This can maybe help you in your decision.
Anyhow, my experience is that you cannot be cutting edge on just a few pieces of your setup (like using python 2.7.5), without having the latest versions of all the remaining tools/libraries.
So, if you decide to stick on 0.8.3, my advice would be to stay with python 2.7.3, since 0.8.3 has been thoroughly tested on that version.
Maybe back porting 342d86f is fine, but there might be other quirks which are yet to be found out.
Let me know
Claudio