So Fish-how and when do you use VR?
I use VR when I'm shooting hand-held at shutter speeds that are going to be slower than the focal length I'm using. For instance... If I'm shooting at 200mm I want my shutter speed to be AT LEAST 1/200 of a second, and preferably even faster. I'll definitely (consider) engaging VR when doing hand-held shots at very slow shutter speeds. Generally I can hand hold pretty well down to 1/60s or so un-braced, but any slower and and I'll give VR a go and see what I get. Even then, while I trust VR do do its job, I still verify my shots visually. I don't remember if Thom's article mentions this, but VR can cause issues with framing to a small but annoying (to me anyway) degree. I really hope that's covered in the article because otherwise you're going to think I'm nuts!
The best "VR" in my experience, is keeping your shutter-speed well above the focal length. I think with higher resolution cameras (say, 20MP and higher, roughly) this "guideline" is critical to getting consistent sharpness. Personally, even though I shoot with a full-frame body, I like to stick to the old adage of using a shutter speed that is 1.5 times the focal length that DX body-users are told to use (e.g. for a focal length of 100mm use a shutter speed of no less than 1/150s). It doing that means I have to let my ISO creep up a little bit, then that's what I do (typically). ISO noise I can deal with during post-processing; but a blurry shot from unintended motion-blur is trash 99.9% of the time. Of course things don't always work out perfectly but that's just photography for ya, and those are the guidelines I tend to follow. Try them... Stick with what works, discard the rest.