Quote - I read the whole thread about dynamic hair again and GC isn't mentioned at all.

read some his posts on GC and IDL.  he uses dynamic hair and IDL in everything i know about now.  his Miki 3 previews use dynamic hair, as do many of his images in GC discussion threads.  i don't know about his dynamic hair discussions.   but since every image i've seen him post has seemed to use the same workflow, i'm pretty sure he's just, you know, using GC.  you only have to talk about it when people bring it up.  

Quote - Poserpro GC makes the diffuse shadows and highlights on the ball very hard, and I don't like that, but perhaps I'm doing something wrong.

first of all, bagginsbill and carodan have posted ways of blurring the terminator.  it involves using SmoothStep to blur the shading.  i'm pretty sure i don't use that technique well, so i'll just suggest you look it up.  second of all, since i don't know anything about your lighting, i'll mention once again that sRGB equations are a little more accurate than GC.  this means that GC is flatter and less accurate in dark areas, which affects surface shading, cast shadows and dark diffuse colors.  third, if you're working on an indoor scene, you might want to make sure your lights have some falloff.  i realize you might already be doing this, but i thought i'd mention it just in case.