Hi smoogle!
You're wellcome to this list and your help and/or contributions will be very appreciated.
About 4) I was like templario, next to two weeks after I sent my request, I recived the confirmation mail to download the shell package.
5) See this thread on iRex forum:
http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1130
The other questions I'm afraid I'm not sure to answer you most of them. I'm still a newbie with iliad
so wait for more experienced users.