BTW, I discovered I didn't have those inset curves (shown in pjz99's shots above) tripled, so those are also split in the latest version - but those corners aren't where I'm getting the smoothing issues.

Frankly, I have more problems of more varieties with PP2010 than I think I've had with any previous version, all based around simple stuff that they 'fixed' at least 3 versions ago; that's what's so frustrating. Phong or Reyes shading - these issues weren't issues in 6 and 7 (at least not for me), and now I'm not sure what approach to take to make the model work in this more 'advanced' version, where apparently even turning smoothing off doesn't really turn it off at all.

BTW, can you show those 3 examples above in wireframe?