You will love the slider. Takes a bit to get used to but no going back for me now.
I used to think that the Forrest was the end all blade when I had a contractor saw so I naturally ordered up a Forrest 12" WWII for my combo before I actually had it setup and tried it out. On my old contractor saw it did most everything OK but never anything perfect with the exception of cross cutting. Ripping and ply were its biggest weaknesses. Ripping blades are MUCH more efficient at ripping (of course) but I just had no idea how great they are until I was struggling with some hard maple. Same goes for ply. Getting chipout on some prefinished maple ply for some cabinets and picked up a ply blade and eliminated 99% of the chipout.
Stick with high quality blades. Really can't go wrong. I would stay away from the Irwin line. Lots of options out there. Forrest makes all of the different style blades but as you can see everyone has their favorites.
Good luck setting up the saw and starting to make sawdust.