Related to #1 it sounds like the ColorVu in low light without supplemental IR or LED (which is my plan) is a little more auto adjusting in terms of tweaking parameters that impact quality of color low light video, which would be good for this rookie.
I wouldn't bet on any Dahua/Hik camera being auto-adjusting enough that you'll never have to go into settings and tweak the image settings.
If you haven't seen this thread on tuning, it's worth a quick browse-through and bookmark for later:
Common issues with camera image | IP Cam Talk
I get why you wouldn't want to use this camera's built-in LED light (I think
@sebastiantombs nailed it above), but if it turns out there isn't enough ambient street light for this camera to record in color with an acceptable amount of motion blur, then you're kind of stuck with a camera that isn't too useful.
You also mentioned you didn't want to run supplemental IR. The ColorVu/Full Color cameras actually can't use IR to help them out if there isn't enough ambient light. If it turns out there isn't enough ambient light to run in color mode, is that something you'd reconsider? If so, you could use one of Dahua's 5442 models. IMO, Hik doesn't have similarly priced models. The 5442s will stay in color mode at night (if there is enough ambient light), but if there isn't enough ambient light they will switch to B/W mode and use the built-in IR (which isn't visible to human eyes). The extra IR can significantly help the performance of the camera. While it wouldn't be a color recording, the image quality could be significantly better (if the ambient light level is low).