Yes I got started a long time ago and not with premades. I used freebie meshes long before I used content. I'm also a freebie junky, downloading Poser/Studio content from all over the world. And I have had far fewer problems installing manually then with any DAZ installer to date.

I am also a big advocate of teaching men to fish.

I wish some one had steered me away from the DAZ installers when I first started using DAZ content. The DAZ installers is why I had content I couldn't find, installed in 3 different places on my comp. I wish some one had coached me in orgenizing runtimes; yes runtimes, before mine got to the point of pacaderm uslessness and I spent a week redownloading and installing my content to sorted runtimes.

I work in my runtimes, so they need to be organized with everything easy to find. And why I hate the Studio cluster F content folder. If the Studio content folder wasn't such a mess there wouldn't be so many people that find DIM and CMS essential. Poser's runtimes are like a book shelf, yes some of the books may be out of place, but they are stacked neatly in their own sections. Studio's content folder is more like a kids toy box where things just get dumped in hap hazardly. My content folder is full of floater folders, folders that should be some place but are just dropped in the "my libarary" folder.

Now why have I got this attitude about DIM and CMS? DIM wont work for me, I have 26 active runtimes. Only maybe 10% of the content I use is from DAZ, so 90% of the time DIM is of no use to me. Same with CMS, maybe only 5% of my content has metadata. And even though CMS may not be a DAZ DRM, it has too high a propencety to be used as such for me to trust it on my machine. But at the base of it I have no need of DIM or CMS, and DAZ trying so hard to make them essential or manditroy just puts me off them all together.

"Don't worry dude, everyone is getting chips put in their head, they're just to help you remember things and orgenize your thoughts". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFkbSAH7yb4 lol

Lets not forget that DAZ and DAZ advocates have been trying to shuve these down everyones throat since incept. Think that is BS? Then why is CMS absolutly manditory for using genesis in Carrara 8.5. Yes, if you want to use genesis in carrara 8.5 CMS is absolutly manditory to have installed and running, how is that not shuving CMS down my throat? You Studio users haven't felt that fist in you mouth yet, but it is coming.

I really wish you all that are eating in DAZ's dinning room would step out on to the back porch where DAZ is freading the rest of the DAZ family, yesterdays leftovers... cold.

What can I say, I read 1984 at 12, so  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four