How to get Inkscape to save PDF's without ugly black boxes behind transparent raster images

I am using the vector graphics editing program Inkscape. Whenever I use File -> Save A Copy -> PDF, if there are any raster images with transparency in my document, the transparent areas will save with black boxes behind them instead of being transparent.

It appears that this is an Inkscape Bug. There is a bug report from 2009 on the issue here. (Yiiikes. 2009? Uuugh!)

I have found one workaround to the problem that I have posted in this thread on the Inkscape forum. However I wanted to see if the SuperUser community could 1) provide more information on this bug (does it only affect certain users, such as Windows 7 users?) and 2) if you have any better workarounds (the workaround I link converts the image to raster, losing all vectors).