1. does the higher PPS strictly mean more chance of finding blocks or increased probability of finding blocks like higher hash rate with scrypt coins?
It is general consensus that PPS is a bad measure for the chance of finding blocks. It *is* sufficient when you're comparing identical software with identical settings on different hardware setups or operating systems.
If you're using the "high performance" miner, the "5-chains" value matches the chance much better.
2. it is better to have a higher amount of cores ie dual quad , or less cores and much higher cycle rate ie slow 8 core xeon 2.ghz or 4 cores going at 4.0ghz? or does it not matter so long as PPS is roughly the same?
I think 8*2 would be better than 4*4, but it's hard to tell.
3. On my linux machine can i just copy my primecoin wallet.dat and put in on my home windows machine in the roaming folder and access the coins if i wish?
I don't know if wallet.dat is portable.
ie as soon as i fire up a new linux machine if i backup the wallet.dat and download to my local machine will i in future be able to access all coins generated on my linux server even if that got taken down.
That's not going to work, because the linux server will generate additional keys that will not magically appear in the backup wallet.dat.
4. I worked out that 1000PPS is roughly costing about $10 per month factoring in a few things. Is that worth mining on?
That's impossible to tell because noone knows what the XPM price will be next month.