[Touch HD General] ClydeB1:
1. I presume by unofficial rom you mean a "cooked rom" as found here on xda? There are many options of cooked roms. You have a choice between wm6.1 and wm6.5. These roms also have different versions of manila (TF3D) ie v2.0, 2.1, 2.5 and 2.5.1 (aka 2.6). So as you can see there are many different combinations to cater for differing needs. Generally these cooked roms have been optimised and because of the dedication of the chefs they tend to iron out many of the little bugs still left in the official roms by htc.

2. Sorry but your link did not work. A rom upgrade is similar to upgrading the os of your pc. As stated above you get the choice currently between wm6.1 and wm6.5 (ie like xp or vista). Different versions of TF3D are incorporated into these different roms and some chefs will offer different manila versions with their roms. I did not stay with my stock rom for long, so I can't remember the ability to load other apps onto it. I know with the cooked roms you do now get the ability to load "unsigned" apps. Some fo the features of the Touch 2 will be incorporated into these roms soon as the chefs get to port more and more of this functionality down to the HD.

3. I'm not certain, but I would imagine you can do reg setting changes on the stock rom as well.

4. Not certain.

5. Flashing could void your warranty, but loading software should not as any software loaded is uninstallable and in worst case you could just do a hard reset to remove any stubborn program.

There are 2 options for flashing, each with different possible impacts on your warranty:

- uspl - allows you to temporarily bypass the security features so that you can flash to a new rom. As it is temporary, you need to repeat this procedure each time you want to flash. But it also leaves no evidence, so provided you can flash back to your stock rom, then no issues with warranty.

- hspl - this is more risky from a warranty perspective as if your phone breaks down and you are unable to reflash to the stock spl then your warranty will be voided. hspl makes flashing easier however, especially if you do it often and although it can be reversed, as I said above it is a little more risky.

6. Yes it will, but you can back these up and restore after you have flashed.

7. Provided you follow the steps as described in the documents you linked to above, there is very little chance of bricking your phone, but there is no guarantee with this and with anything in life things can go wrong. I (and hundreds others) have successfully flashed to a new rom almost weekly for many months and do not have problems. Those that you see having issues are generally those who have not bothered to read the guidance. I for one would probably be fairly dissatisfied with the Touch HD if I still had the stock rom. The new roms give new features and interfaces regularly and they improve the speed, performance and power consumption with each iteration.

With an spl of 1.14.0000 you would need to upgrade this to either 1.54 or 1.56 using the uspl or hspl methods respectively. Once upgraded, you will be able to flash most if not all of the roms found under the rom development section of this forum.