Moving to the Denver area, and have a few questions. (Center: apartment, neighborhoods)

[QuantumSatori]

Hello everybody,

I am taking a bit of a 'leap of faith'. I traveled to Colorado for a vacation with my father about 4 years ago, and fell in love with the mountains. I am currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I have lived basically my whole life. The past year has been a bit turbulent, as I am sure is the case with many people nationwide living in these troubled times. To make a long story short, I have decided that I would like to move to the Denver area to begin a new life.

I am not, however, wanting to make this move blindly. I have a few basic questions that I hoped might be answered by the members here;

1a) I work in the IT field, and am qualified for most mid-level help-desk style jobs. In the Cincinnati area, there are certain neighborhoods where most of the corporate-style offices call their home. I am looking for suggestions for neighborhoods that might have a similar density of these type of businesses to what I have seen here.

1b) Likewise, I will be looking for a decent studio or 1br apartment hopefully close to an area like this. I am a single guy in my late 20's, and I am more of a tech geek and science nut than I am a bar fly. I would also happily accept a slightly longer drive; if it meant living in a more quiet spot, or closer to like-minded individuals.

2) Another concern I have is regarding the winter weather. I have read some other threads about the Denver area, and my main concerns lie with the stated mentality regarding cleaning up the snow once it falls. I currently drive a smaller FWD manual-transmission car which is a little on the sportier side. Living in Ohio, I do have a decent amount of experience driving in the snow; but I am curious to hear how many people drive 4WD vehicles during the winter months, compared to how many drive FWD. My intentions are to eventually get something 4WD, but I have my doubts about being able to afford do so before winter.

I am open to suggestions, opinions, or ideas on things I might not have considered moving from an area like mine to the Denver area.

Thank you all for reading, and again in advance for any info you are able to provide me.

[Snikt]

1a -- DTC or Denver Tech Center has a lot of professional jobs, not just IT. The IT jobs here are pretty spread out in the metro area, but downtown Denver and DTC are probably the 2 highest.

1b --Many areas fit this bill. This is personal preference but if you aren't a bar person I would live in the suburbs and avoid all the downtown nonsense and traffic. Which suburb kinda depends on where your job is, you wouldn't want a southern suburb if you get a job in the north, etc.. You're looking at about $800-1100 for a decent 1 bedroom and depending on options (pets, garage, etc..)

2-- What you have will work fine in the city, it actually doesn't snow that much in Denver itself, and if it does it usually melts pretty quick. If you do a lot of driving in the mountains, back roads, etc.. in the winter I would say AWD/4WD is a big help, bordering "required". At a minimum I would use snow tires on a FWD car if doing a lot of mountain driving with snow.