LSD - B5.5, on my machine anyway, seems to start off in normal priority mode. Changing the modes up or down the list of options didn't seem to do anything at all for cpu usage. Must say, I'd not really noticed much difference with rendering speeds with the minimisation... but then does what you're seeing only becomes noticable if you're runnig a second cpu intense task as well as the render? I've seen something like that happen when rendering multiple bryce 5's simultaneously on win2k and win98 - the one thats not minimized gets most of the cpu. I like the bug fixes - they're great for work flow (not having to turn off all those damn light gels - wheeee). Given a good patch that lets/makes b5.5 use more than 50% of the HT enabled CPUs and perhaps adding b5's old simple opengl option to the other opengl options that they've put in would be damn sweet if they could do that :) Foleypro - yeap - all light gels are gone in both cases - I made sure of that, as I'd seen you mention it in a few other threads about the place. The funny thing is I've had a couple of my old b5.01 scenes open without the light gels applied in b5.5, so am wondering if b5.01 saves the scene without the light gel (the way it should) but then applies the errant light gel when it opens a scene back up (rather than saving the scene with the errant light gel). Haven't fully tested that last theory yet. Erlik - yeap. optimized for programs - I've seen that setting in one of my exploratory raids into the xp settings. I've also noticed that those memory usage numbers in the task manager thingy seem to hop all round the place for bryce (and other programs). The total ram used number however seems much more stable and make much more sense. Rathe - I've only had opengl probs with b5.01 when I've been hopping between the various opengl/direct3d/other options.

Dreams are just nightmares on prozac...
Digital WasteLanD