I've been building my own systems since 93 and went with AMD since 2001 - It was very easy to see the price/performance ratio of AMD over Intel.

Now I'm back to intel. Two of my new work stations  are core-duo rigs. It's hard to see laying down any money on AMD based hardware for the foreseeable future. Intel is back on top after some 7 years of architectural missteps.

Mine started falling apart after the first three days.

Nice thread. Will post relevent links to tutorials when I come accross them

The Tech Support at 1on1 is great. Toll free phone as well as pretty quick response to emails. I have one domain at Godaddy which is a joke. No toll free lines and automated email responses. I'm not going to jump ship on my other hosting services just yet, but 1on1 is pretty impressive out of the gate. Cost, Capacity, and Support is better than the others right now.

Acadia - I spoke with Vincent Santarita in Tech Support last night and he verrified that the 6GB limit did not apply to the Home package. Cool deal. I may consider moving some more domains over if 1&1 proves a stable and dependable service. Thanks for the heads up.

I've used freeservers.com for many years now and I haven't had any real issues with their service and support. But they are really falling behind in volume of space provided per account.

I get a meesly 2GB transfer and 500Mb storage for $7.99 per month. I am going to need to transfer my business site to one that offers more space and offers good monthly transfers for the same rate with similar features.

1&1 may suit my other needs to start but the 6GB limit worries me. Not bad for 4.99 a month but their advertising 500GBs not 6GBs. Acadia if you find something out, let me know.

Message edited on: 11/29/2005 19:24

I just registered a site with 1and1. Dissapointed in the Terms of Agreement at the end. THis is what the offer in the link says

"Monthly Transfer Volume 500 GB"

And compare with what it says below.

"2.1.5.

Bandwidth use, including but not limited to data retrieval from Your Web Site, e-mail traffic, and downloads, shall not exceed six gigabytes per month."

6 GB's is substantially less than 500GB's. What's up with that?

Message edited on: 11/29/2005 18:22

I have a strong preference for CRT's over any LCD for a variety of reasons. Chiefly is color reproduction. I've talked with a TFT engineer and he advised me that lower end LCD's are on their way to achieveing 800-1000 contrast ratios. However, that is well under a standard CRT of any size. In regards to response times on LCD's some manufacturers resort to an 18 bit color screen which results in dithering. That leads to further color degradation. This is normaly done to get less than 16ms response times. Check the specs before you buy to be safe if color reproduction is important to you. When I have to do anything on an LCD, I always run the results on a CRT when opportunity allows. Unless you are opting to drop 2-3k on an LCD you may be best suited to a Professional 20" CRT that youcan pick up for $300-400 most anywhere. If cost is an issue I have seen 19" CRTs going for $79-120.

Fantastic impish! I would have never thought to try a filter setting for that. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks very much. Rich

It looks like Fusion replaces the current synch plugin and removes the need for composite work one would normaly use after two seperate renders.

"..In one single render pass, Max or Maya elements will be rendered together with Vue elements, accurately matching shadows, reflections and illumination to deliver totally blended CG footage without requiring any additional effort..."

By using the host 3D apps interface, hopefully this will allow better animation controls of Vue cameras and objects. The more I read it the more it looks like the synch plug on steroids. If it overides Vues current animation timelines short comings, that would be a big plus.

Of course that feature list is not complete yet

"A detailed feature list will soon be available at the e-on software website."

You can read about Fusions features at the folloeing link
** E-Ons Fusion Features**

And it looks like you will need a seperate license of Vue 5 Inf to use it

*Requires a separate license of Vue 5 Infinite. Vue objects cannot be edited independently in Max/Maya without prior export from Vue.
Vue Fusion is expected to ship this fall. A version of Vue Fusion for LightWave and Cinema4D is currently under development.

I'm hoping Fusion will cost no more than $200-250. It effectively bridges the serious animation shortcomings in Vue5 right now. As it stands the animation timeline editor is lacking in Pro level controls. Adjusting multiple pitch and bank in a camera path results in poor or even jerky transitions. There are hacks like targeting nulls, but they are not full proof.

By moving the timeline features into a pro host app, E-On is spared having to engineer these in Vue. I guess in the end getting Vues advanced features melded/welded onto a host animation application is the next best thing. A kind of best of both worlds.

MAGIC....like in Smoke and Mirrors. :)
Unless someone can spot it. It looks like E-On has taken the Fusion feature info and link off their site.

Here's a link >> VUE FUSION Features <<

I really would like to see how well LW and Vue get integrated together.

If I understand it correctly, the Vue Inf serial number is tied to the Lightwave Serial Number. So if its not tied to the dongle, it apppears you could resell it. That is of course if E-On accepts the registration by someone else other than a LW purchaser. What I mean by that is, if NewTek supplies the LW/9 registration details to E-On, the person buying Vue may not be eligable for upgrades to future versions. Of course that's just a guess.

I know I'm going for my 2nd copy of Vue for the 9 upgrade. I couldn't pass up having more Render Cows. They showed a Vue and Lightwave composite at Siggraph that looked real nice. As well as a preliminary Vue layout inside LW9. Needless to say, there are allot of animators picking up on the Vue Inf offer. It appears theres some License number mixup with a number of Lightwave/Vue purchases. I'm sure after that is all squared away quite a few new users shoudl be making the rounds.