It works fabulously as a room heater (in other words, my electricity is free as it would be used for heating anyway), but I really don't want to stay on Antpool forever. I have some questions for people who have done/are doing XT mining:

1. I intend to switch to a p2pool node - perhaps /u/jtoomim's node, for starters. Are Antminers any good with p2pool?
2. P2pool, as far as I understand, works on a "sharechain". Is my 453GH/s going to give me a respectable amount of shares (i.e. I'll expect to get something every time p2pool finds a block), or will I be subject to even greater variance?
3. What does it take to run my own p2pool node - what's the expertise/equipment level needed? Is there any benefit to delegating to someone else's node, other than the obvious benefit of not having to do the work of maintaining my own node? Does the software run on non-linux machines?
4. Does anyone has experience changing the fan on their miners? The current noise level is acceptable, but I want to make it even more quiet, so it'll look less like a miner and more like a true appliance.