[G2 and Desire Z General] kbeezie:
On OSX it's pretty much similar least on the command line since most of the same commands if not behaviors act nearly identical once you pop open the terminal app (or in my case iTerm2), you just run dab and such like it were a linux binary, which I can do from anywhere since it's already in the PATH env. (OSX at the command line is a tad closer to FreeBSD than it is Linux, but I can still easily just pop up and type ssh user@server -p port, and it'll work with paired keys and all that rather than having to fiddle with the likes if puTTY if you get the idea). So never had to worry bout drivers so much with that for my phone. If you're a linux user adb/etc should be just bout as easy to deal with.

EliteMod ICS is experimental since there's no official/stock ICS rom for the G2/Vision to work off of. That being said if you want GingerBread EliteMod CM7 is a nice stable one that has been tweaked in much the same way. You could if decided to just go with the main CyanogenMod 7.2.0 base for the G2.

4EXT does have a free version, but I chased to donate, the recovery image is pretty packed with some info and abilities and it's a much nicer touch screen interface than say the ClockWorkModTouch (which still requires power button as 'back' instead of just tapping the back button like in 4EXT). It also let me convert my system partitions from EXT3 to EXT4, as well as create the sd-ext partition as ext4 which is better performing and my current rom supports it. In any case I like it a lot more than CWM.

Far as buttons on the phone, you mainly have three choices of bootup, 1) FastBoot [usual place that you can flash a new firmware, radio, etc if your recovery won't let you), 2) Recovery [RaMon, CWM, 4EXT, etc], where you can flash a radio if you have an unlocked boot loader, flash roms, partition the SD card, set up swap, make backups that you can restore from etc. 3) The main system.

Far as the fat battery this particular 9$ one is only about a day old as I just got it, I prefer the rubberized feel of the battery door it comes with and makes it a bit easier for me to hold and one-hand-text if I wanted to, or gives me kind of a back lip to hold while the screen is open. It's actually not that bad on bulk in my opinion as I can still slip it into my pocket and holding it isn't that bad. Side View:

And where I got it from: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251065892927

I seen similar ones listed from china, but I don't like shipping from china so I got that one shipped from the US (even if it may be the exact same product). There was course the BLACK 3600mAh and such around 20-30 from say amazon, and accessory geeks etc, and there is of course the Mugen 3600mAh one for around I think 85$, but I didn't like how those kind of had a 'dome' over the speaker output where as this one is flat against the speaker.

So far it's been on battery for about 14 hours (had google play streaming some music during some of the screen off time), most of that time on standby as I just woke up, when you receive it you gota charge it least a good 6 hours or so, or til the phone basically stops saying 99% and says 100% [ie: thats when the overcharge switch in the battery flips, and basically tells the phone it's charged], otherwise you pop it in, and it thinks you're at like 65% but you're actually near dead on the battery and you'll appear to have battery like dropping like a rock, but it's just that they ship the battery with next to no charge so you gota fully charge it and 'teach' the phone so to speak.

I was using the stock 1300mAh HTC battery prior, with my SetCPU profiles and the undervaluing it did pretty good on idle too (But probably would have been at 60% after 14 hours mostly screen-off and not 85%) But like I said it's a new battery to me so far as it's duration I'm still testing that, but I still like the feel of the extended battery door. Most won't but I do.

Far as being worth it for you, well if you're planning on sticking with Gingerbread and won't be messing with undervolting and such, then your stock 1300mAh may be fine, though there is a mugen 1800 if you want a thin battery with more juice.

Regardless if you go Gingerbread or ICS using the SetCPU profiles does help, such as lowering Mhz during screen off. If you can get into adb output the values of vdd_levels , i.e.: cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/vdd_levels if you don't have another means of seeing your current voltage tables and set your maximum speed from there.

Meaning if you want to set a profile in SetCPU to run screen-off at 245mhz -> 368Mhz, check the vdd_levels, because for example in mine I have:

245760: 900
368640: 925
768000: 925

Makes no sense to limit the phone to 368Mhz when 768Mhz draws the same amount of power from the phone, and having it lower than 768Mhz with the screen off might impact the phone's ability to wake or receive a call quickly enough. So yea the voltage tables do come in handy even if you are not going to be undervolting.