>> may I suggest that you subscribe to Zen Cart Release Announcements so that you are not surprised in the future about changes that are being made globally (retirement of sub-systems such as PHP 5.2.x). I did a relatively quick look through and didn't see that it was out-right stated that PHP 5.2.x was going away,

This was an unannounced Host upgrade. A notice from Zen wouldn't have helped ( other than the need for an upgrade to a newer site).

Upgrade on current site. Got it, except the BIGGIE .... having to login to admin every 15 minutes. It's the most annoying feature of the new version.

>> Don't discredit files that have been "renamed" as in some cases they can be a problem to loading the site...

Have not seen that in installations. I always rename files that will be overwritten by a add-on.