Very interesting! P3 1 Ghz 256Mb Ram, Win 98, 70 seconds. Several years ago I tested render time with the little status guy sidestepping across the progress bar. On an older machine (P1, 166 Ghz, 64 MB) he was costing me about 4-5 seconds a minute. I renamed the extension on the little avi file (seems like it may have been named status.avi or something similar) and he disappeared. Poser works fine and my renders are faster, plus I found him annoying. If anyone is interested I can check this out at home tonight and provide more details. Sorry if this old news.