I do mainly simple broadcast work with the FW1884, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask. The main desktop machines here have Echo Audio and an M-audio 2496 respectively as the inboard soundcards, but I tend to use the FW1884 as the main audio interface with either machine (and sometimes with the laptops) as it is so much more flexible.
The mic pre's are quite adequate for my use, but like many of this type of device, they lack gain for recording quiet speech on dynamic mics (eg lip mic use). Most people here don't do this, of course, and with the powered mics here the gain is OK.
Setup is just a matter of selecting Mackie emulation and hoping, and has been simple for me. I read about others having trouble, though.
There is a little applet that lets you set up routing, and I usually use a rather strange setup where I record all the channels individually for mixing later, but route the live 'monitor mix' back to a muted channel to give a full as-it-happens record of the full 'event'. This, as I say, is for a sort of broadcast use rather than a small studio, giving an instant 'final mix', but with the possibility of re-mixing some bits later.
I've not had any problems with the asio drivers or with latency, but I'm not really working in areas where latency is a problem.
Http://tascamforums.com is worth joining, but it has introduced a one-time fee to reduce spam.