OP, what type of VPN are you wanting to connect to and why do you say it is "awful"? I connect to two different PPTP VPN's on a regular basis to manage Linux servers and have not had any issues. In fact, I think the way Apple has layer out the VPN settings is quite elegant.
As a point of clarification, I have been using this since 4.3 and have had no issues on 4.3, 4.3.1 or now on 4.3.2.