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.

Can't help on the hair, but I've had similar experience with the seam issue when using head/body textures for Mike, Vicky, Eve, etc. from different sources/artists, especially when mixing/matching. Try selecting the color tool from the editing tools, clicking on the body with the paint can icon, drag the icon and move it horizontally along the lower paint color bar, (flesh tones), until the head and body colors match. This is faster than using the materials editor and trial and error. I don't use too many textures, but adjust the color and skin tones of the ones I use in this manner.