1. Thanks for the feedback, we have had that feature ticketed, just bumped it in priority some more because of you and Bluspacecow.
2. Minion polls our server for updated data ever 60 minutes if you leave it open. If you have the auto update feature enabled under options it will even auto install the updates for you.
3. Good idea, making a ticket for that now.
4. Interesting, what operating system are you on? Where were you trying to install Minion? Does the user account have admin privileges?
I haven't seen this issue yet. I know many of our international folks running non-latin versions of windows have to install it in other locations and haven't experienced this because Minion currently has a bug if your username is non-latin (default install location has the windows username in the path).