Wow! Firstly, my pet peeve, the "MP BIOS bug..." message was taken care of (i think), smoothest driver installation, checked and found i could play all my radio stations, not only that, to play swf files before, i had to manually install the flash plug-in, with Helena even that is not needed. The boot time remains more or less the same (56 seconds from the time i press the power button till when my desktop and heavily crammed panel get fully loaded and usable), but that's hardly a reason to complain. So without much dilly-dallying i will now do what i promised before in this thread, eat my own words...munch, munch, chomp, chomp..ugh! they taste awful...never mind, i will get rid of the aftertaste later with a few sprigs of 'Fresh' Mint and a toast to Helena. Sorry Gloria, you are no longer the fairest of them all, even if i think there's very little to differentiate between you and her. 
PS: Anybody notice this, no Services option in Menu?