Good info, thanks! But, I'm tire-retarded unless we're talking about motorcycles...

Most of my winter driving will be around-town garbage in Knoxville, which gets basically no snow and only occasional ice (that I've thus far handled without issue in my crapbox Honda). Snowy mountain roads are weekend fun, and I don't plan on much more than a few inches of fresh snow on a generally hard-packed surface and patchy ice.

So, would it be reasonable to run real winter tires for the entire season, for both of those driving purposes, or would I be better off to run something less serious and save the ride quality for the bulk of my driving (grocery gettin')?

I have no idea if any of that made sense.