Wow, this gained more traction than I expected.

I guess I will be writing up the programming side of this... That's fine, just gonna take a bit when I'm not at work.

A couple of quick responses:
I disagree with DFB and agree with TD1164 that programming with chirp is easy. Programming without chirp isn't impossible, but it's not intuitive. I have to keep in mind that I have been programming HAM radios since I was 7, and so I am used to learning new stupid menu's, verbiage, etc... The only time I have ever HAD to program by hand is like what DFB pointed out of being in a new area and trying to hit a repeater. In order to program for a single repeater, it's not that bad. I'll walk through that as well.

For MURS, as Vitesse mentioned, this is one of the down falls of a $20 radio. MURS requires very specific channel widths (11.25 and 20khz) while the rest of the world runs on 6.25, 12.5, 25, and 50khz (pre FCC narrowbanding - long story) but that means that the majority of radios built to function for anything beyond the MURS bands are using a different channel width. From a radio design standpoint, it's not easy to include odd channel widths with standards. So, what this really means is that you can run these radios on those bands, but you won't be matching the actual specifications of the band, which means you are breaking FCC rules and regs. Also, using a radio not certified for MURS on a MURS channel is not permitted by the FCC so you are breaking FCC rules and regs there too... Will it work with other BF/China radios set to the same freq and parameters? Yep. Will it work with actual MURS radios? Haven't tried it, but you might be able to make it function. Is it allowed? No, so I would recommend not doing that.

Anyway, more later.