Flying in wind  

I should have clarified, the the 135 is smoother in cruise flight during normal or high winds but yes the 145 is better in the wind during final approach and landing.  That big sail out there on the 135 makes for interesting approaches once you get above 20 knots of crosswind, mainly right crosswinds.  It will do it, I've never hit the stop but it gets a shimmy and when your doing those EMS approaches where the company wants you super slow that means the power is in early and there are times when I'm stuck having a right crosswind that I look down and i swear I'm 1/2 inch from the stop.  The 145 with normal tail rotor and supporting structure doesnt have that same issue.  Now granted I'm only talking about P2+ and older aircraft with the end plates on the horizontal and larger tail bumper/fin.  The newer 135s dont have the end plates and have only a bumper below the fenestron so maybe they do a little better.

And yes there are many other problems with the elite version that you touched on, I at least understood the idea of the VFR version where you strip it down and save a bunch of weight and money but they somehow messed that up.  Then they come up with the IFR version where they take what was already a good IFR platform and take all that out and put their garbage in it vs just leaving it alone.  The down vs up time on these 145s C2 and C2e's is terrible, the e's being worse.  Go ask Umass Lifeflight how they like theirs, the first year i believe it had a 50-60% up time, spare was always there with a brand new C2e broken in the hangar.  With only D3's rolling off the assemble line for the awhile now you have to actively try and find a used C2 or whatever remaining C2e's that Metro has managed to get from Airbus to convert but that will eventually dry up when the airframes stop coming.  Maybe it was last year or two that Metro said they had only 20 left and didnt know what was happening after that.