Yes, very pleased - thank you! Other than a few particulars, in the end it was still very much like flashing a computer BIOS. This ROM is just full of great improvements over the stuff VM loaded us up with.
Well, at the risk of hijacking the thread... heh...
When the screen times out with Maps open, and you wake it back up, many times the map view has gone blank (white) except for the top dashboard and controls (navigation and zoom buttons, etc.). Zooming in or out doesn't help, and neither does going to list view and back to map view. Often at this point, if you're lucky, Maps will soon throw a Force Close. If you're not, you'll usually have to go kill it manually. This problem also seems to occur sometimes when you switch tasks and come back to Maps.
Thanks for being so helpful. I've tried the process you suggest, on VM stock 2.2.1. I also tried uninstalling the updates and just leaving them off. No love. Now with BACKside, it doesn't merely uninstall updates but rather uninstalls the whole program. Tried that too. In both cases I tried deleting the data and clearing the cache before I started. Lots of googling, little in the way of answers, it seems.