o.k., thx fr the info, pj.  I tried the poser area light with raytracing unchecked, and there was no illumination (black scene).  however, yer correct: according to one of the developers, GI includes any lighting effects where light is being transferred from one surface to another surface (area light, caustics (indirect specular), radiosity (indirect diffuse), reflections, refractions, et al.).  so it means that an area light is a GI fx, but that GI fx require raytracing calculations.  it's possible that there's no shadow options with the new daz area lights, either.  in versions prior to poser 8, they allowed the users to select shadow options for directional lights, which means they could select wrong, bad or no shadows.