Hi Ken. I voted ported. As you know, the answer to this question is, "it depends". IMO any advantage sealed has is in waf, and space savings. Smaller rooms can be fine with sealed. But the age old claims of ported subs being tubby and slow, and sealed are tight and musical, are not true, and I think many people still hold on to these beliefs as to hold themselves up to some audiophile nonsense. Another thing people confuse is that you can plop a sealed sub in a room and have all this magical room gain to give you single hz performance. In reality, sealed is the way to do that, but it takes crazy power and excursion, and most commercial subs, even if they can reach 10hz, can't do it with any meaningful output. It's also dependent on room dimensions as to where room gain starts to take effect. How low do you want to spend?
For question 2), I don't know really. I'm sure you'll get some good answers here. I feel a little nervous being the first one to answer! Lol