I don't recall anything "special" for my armstech.

If you are talking about the level 50 Rakata Belt/Bracers your synthweaver makes the answer is no, they are bound on pickup. Its your "reward" for maxing out synthweaving on that character, like only Biochem can use the reusables. All other Green, Blue, Purple, and Orange gear can be crafted and mailed to anyone. The tooltips will say if its BoE or BoP

Evolution explains the size difference. The Tauntauns have gradually grown larger over the years between TOR and Episode 5.

Datacrons are a big help in both PvP and PvE and give you a chance to explore pieces of the map you may have missed. The total stat bonuses are equivilent to like 3 extra purple augments.

If you want books that tie into TOR directly read Fatal Alliance, Deception, and Revan. The Sith Intro movie in TOR is a recreation of a battle in the books where the jedi temple is sacked. Revan ties into the Taral V/ Maelstrom prison flashpoints (jedi prisoner sequence for the republic players). They are not nearly as good as the Timothy Zahn books but to fill in the lore from this game.

I've never worried about pre-50 expertise. I'm not sure what the theoretical max expertise you can achieve prior to 50 but I can't imagine its enough to make a huge difference. I've always saved up my comms for my level 40 PvP set first (you can buy it with comms at any level and store it) then from 40-50 build up my comms and Ranked comms to get some battlemaster gear when I hit 50. Just make sure you get to valor 40 so you can convert regular comms to ranked when you max out. When you hit 50 sell the recruit token for credits, buy as much battlemaster as you can then buy individual recruit pieces to fill in the gaps in armor. Some people say to convert your ranked comms back to regular comms when you hit 50 which should give you 5500 total regular comms. Others say to upgrade whatever battlemaster pieces you buy immediately to WH level after stripping the mods (which could then be put in orange shells if not location specific).

Another option is to pick up synthweaving and craft the green armor as you level. You can find the materials as you level laying all over the place for free. I've used "green" armor as I leveled many of my toons and it works fine for your class quests/ Flashpoints if you keep it current.

Right now my guildmates who are vanguards are OP, they'll probably get hit with the nerf bat at some point. The jedi knight story is more of a KOTOR3 and is even more enjoyable if you read the Revan book that came out just before TOR launched in December. The book gives you a ton of background info for the Jedi Prisoner Quest/Flashpoints and gives a strong background for Lord Scourge and the context for your final battle in your class quest. I play DPS so I have a Commando and Sentinel and can't comment on tanking.

For a complete adaptive bind on legacy set with a legacy weapon I'll spend 2-3 hours running around Nar Shaddaa.

I love the Open PvP on Nar Shaddaa, I only wish I could have killed the imps at the racetrack who were trying to all click the mission at once. I did challenge them to duels but none accepted. Wimps.

I liked the open world PvP during the crate hunt so it didn't feel like a grind to me. I do like the idea of adding the context of that item into the event but I'll be honest and didn't read the mission details yesterday so maybe there was a clue in there somewhere.

It wouldn't be a very good smuggling crate if it had a giant neon sign saying "Open Me" with an arrow pointing to it.

Most of these are jedi knights/ sith warriors not commandos

I liked the knight story the most but trooper is pretty good too. The consular story is slow through chapter 1 but I heard it gets better after that. If you are familier with the original KOTOR games and the lore around them you'll appeciate the story, moreso if you've read the Old Republic books (Revan, Deception, etc.) Also you can't go wrong with the Sentinel or Guardian advanced classes.

Question: If you flip a coin 10 times and they all come up heads, what is the chance of the 11th flip coming up heads? Answer: 50% previous flips have no bearing on the next flip, there are always 2 possible outcomes for every flip. Its been in 100's of forums on this topic, you have an 80% chance to fail on every attempt and that 80% is a constant.