A reason to stop lurking: I grew up near Ithaca. It's a very nice place to live if you are any combination of the following things: an outdoorsy type, politically liberal, vegan, not in need some sorts of cultural phenomena (such as recent independent movies or lots of big malls) and OK with lots of aging hippies.
As for neighborhoods, Collegetown is of course the most convenient and not entirely unaffordable. It's pretty easy to get to campus from downtown. Unless you have large reserves of cash or luck, forget Cayuga Heights and most of Fall Creek. Both are lovely, though, if you can swing it. You might want to have a car, I'm not sure how convenient they are to buses and both are definitely beyond walking distance. And I'm not sure if I would call most of Cornell's student lots within walking distance from campus either. But watch out, I've paid a small fortune in parking tickets to Cornell Public Safety (I want to see a pie chart of their incoming revenue, I'm sure parking fines rival tuition).
And, honestly, it's not that cold. Syracuse is cold. Ithaca is moderate.
