Nolock means 'with potentially incorrect data', not usually this incorrect, but you should expect to not always get correct results when you use nolock. It's why it's not recommended for...

Do not take other log backups of a log shipped DB or you will break the log shipping

If there's no demand for free pages, no pressure to remove objects from cache to make space for new pages, then older objects could stay in cache for long periods....

For those who weren't at Summit, here's some of the recordings, keynotes, the WIT lunch, a few of the sessions

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoGAcXKPcRvbTr23ujEN953pLP_nDyZJC

Yes it will interfere.

I strongly recommend you do one set of backups with one technology. Do all your backups natively or do them all through a 3rd person. At best...

So was I. 🙂

You can do that, the row_version data type's great for that as you don't have to do manually update it. I've also seen people use a calculated column defined as...

An instance is an installation of the database engine. Don't understand your other questions

Couple comments.

The process as it is now tests your backups. If you change to log shipping, then you lose that testing of your backups and you will need to either...

It's strongly not recommended. Transactions should be started and committed/rolled back in a single trip to the database, not left open during user interaction....

No, there isn't. Also be aware that the places you mention are estimates, not necessarily completely accurate values.

No way to answer...

For Model, that's overkill. The database is only used as a template to create other databases (including TempDB), so it should never see any load, so it shouldn't need anything...

If the only damage was the IAM page, probably not. They can be recreated without losing data, though it does require the allow_data_loss option.

Whatever works for you. I prefer to diagnose the cause of a problem before deciding on a solution, but maybe that's just me.