A friend of mine was headed down to Harbor Frieght, so I asked him to pick me up one of those mini chop saws...he came back with the 6" version (said the blades were cheaper!), and it works great!! You can see what is going on a lot better on it compared to the mini.
If you haven't already done so, hook your shop vac up to the trimmer vacuum port. That fixed the problem for me. The very few times the vac hasn't cleared this kind of kerf out of the way, I just tapped it hard on the table or used a dental pick to get the kerf out.