TG,

I bought PP2010 the first day it was available, and I still feel like a noob! Hang in there.

Here's what I usually use for general rendering. For me, it is a good compromise between quality and speed.

As to GC. I'm one of the people who can't seem to get satisfactory results. The colors always seem to leach out, and regardless of the lights, it makes my scenes lighter than I want them to be. (I tend to favor shadowy, moody scenes, but I want the colors saturated.) I'm sure it's the learning curve, but I'm not there yet. I keep playing with it, but keep coming back to working the lighting by hand. 

I DO find BB's Envdome to be invaluable! For general lighting, it is the place I always start. Load it, and one light for shadowing and you've got your basic light set. Then tweak for effect from there.

I follow Poser's suggestions as to where to set raytrace. The highest I've ever set it for was 6 was (as an experiment) and it didn't look any different to me, so I'd say use the guidelines on the pop-up.