...I heartily recommend Jaki's tut. 

I've been using her method and my runtimes are making total sense now.

One key though.  If, like me, you are going to have your runtimes in the C:Root  (or root of whatever drive you are using) be sure to install Studio to that path first as it sets the install path in the .ini for all your plugins.  I struggled for several days trying to get LDP2 and ahEnvironment2 to install correctly and was about to file a bug report when this was pointed out to me.

Since I did this everything works fine, and Studio runs a lot faster.

...I dream of owning it, but that also requires dreaming of winning the Megabucks Lotto as prerequisite.

...I most definitely support this petition.

...sad to hear about the drive meltdown, Was going to get an external for backups but I may rethink this decision and just deal with taking the extra time to burn more backup DVDs.  

...been trying to convince my IT dept at work about that. 

Used to have a nice flat panel display then was moved from the Digital Print dept (which also had a nice climate controlled area) to the drafty, cold, noisy warehouse to co manage a client's prodiction account.  I now have this gargantuan archaic old CRT that is pretty much on it's last legs taking up a major portion of my desk space. I actually had to set the brightness and contrast up almost to maximum just to be able to see what's on the screen.  To make things even more "interesting" I am under what is bascally outdoor Merc Vapour (not regular florescent) lighting which has a lovely 60hz flicker rate.

...and I wonder why I am so overtired when I get home from work lately.  The desire to work on my 3D projects is there but as of late, the head and eyes have been saying "we need a rest".

...I need to stop in here more frequently.  I'm already a month behind on this.

...one of the things that made me a bit hesitant at first to really dive into Bryce were the render times I kept hearing about.  However based on my experiments, I now realise those are using the highest render and ray trace settings with very complex scenes.  Even though the render process is slower, I notice my system runs a fair bit cooler than in Carrara and Studio which I think is why I kept experiencing render crashes after 2 - 2.5 hrs with those applications.

...about 400$ to go until I can get my dedicated 3D machine.

...OK that tears it,  Gonna fire up Bryce tonight when I get home and play a little more with terrains and primitives. It'll be something a lot simpler mind you but I have to give it a try.

This is a very interesting process which nets some really impressive results.

BTW this forum is now bookmarked.

...thanks for the tip. 

I did read that the Poser dynamic features would not work.  Just not sure how that relates to the fit of clothing & hair in D|S.  Lighting is not that much of an issue as I imagine that I can substitute the D|S lighting.

I'll have to experiment with this a bit more using a couple of the free downloads available.

Thanks. 

Currently we are having some issues with D|S 2.0 however I do notice that a number of the Poser based free downloads do work better in the new upgrade.  I also noticed that in the requirements, a few of the files state "Not Tested in D|S" so I imagine those would be ones to avoid. If by accident, I do get something that doesn't work. is there an exchange programme?