| I'm not sure I can answer all of your questions, but I can answer one thing. Living in IL and still generally having to use my car in the winter, I thought the same thing. I had Pirelli summer tires or something on there (I can't remember exactly what they were at the moment) and they sucked in the snow. I figured if I got some all seasons then I'd at least get some traction in the snow vs. the zero traction I was getting with the summer tires. It made absolutely no difference in my opinion. I still got just as bad of traction in the snow. I went with the Hankook Ventus V4 as they say they're a high performance all season with "twice the winter performance than the typical summer tire". I really have no complaints about their price, performance in general or noise but next time I'll probably just go with the regular performance tires. I hope that helped a little.
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The Thrill is back! | 
