Great post, John. Thanks.
The internet speed requirements are daunting. There are an awful lot of smaller communities where 18 Mbps is not possible.
I am a little surprised that it was as difficult as you experienced. It strikes me as an indication of immaturity of a product that the tech support people have to supervise the transition, let alone that it takes a couple of months to work out all the bugs. It suggests a product rushed into release, and gives me further cause to not jump into using 6.5 until it has been in general use for some time.