So when I go down and get the wifey a new Hero, will it have 2.1 already installed?

Hey Night Train,

if you run into difficulties with all this, don't sweat too much. It's a very awkward process. One day I saw a member who tweeted that he had rooted his Hero and threw @androidcentral in it so I saw it, and we struck up conversation, and he sped me past 3 months of misconceptions, confusion, and hesitation and about 45 min later I'd rooted my first Android phone, with a Beezy rom.

The guys here are almost ridiculously helpful. Beezy is stupid fast in his support responses, Rufflez is always around, and GBHil is a knowledge-base. There are too many too count.

But I guess my point is that you'll have the back up you need when it comes down to it.

I'm no expert, but you're more than welcome to find me on Skype as klopinator or twitter as chrisklop.

And yes, you can put Sense on your rooted phone. The Kool-Aid option I'm running right now in fact is Android 2.1 and Sense UI. There's also a sleeker, modified version of Sense called Expresso that you can install if preferred, and I think Beezy even put up a blue version of Expresso.