You have that bell too.
In "my controls" (top of page) go to "eamil settings and enable 'Email Notification'.
Or just do as me and Bruce, move in to the forum.
I dont like the new widgets page, but it´s probably same here, I am not used to it yet, apart from that, the tests I done looks good.
Now we all know what Bruce do at work.
This link should help you upgrade to the latest version of wordpress.
Keep in mind that you should backup your current installation first, in case anything goes wrong, and also that not all themes and plugins are compatible with version 2.5 yet.
One thing to try if you have joomla installed in a sub directory...
I don´t have a joomla installation in a sub directory at the moment so I can´t check it, but I believe you can try adding this line in a htaccess file and place that in the same directory as you have joomla in.