Do some research on www.tomshardware.com & www.extremetech.com The Geforce 6200 is a scaled down version of the 6600/6800. I think I read that the 7200? is going to go on retail any day now at around $100 or so. I have a 6600 which is a bit slower than a 6800. The 6800s are being replaced/phased out by the 7800s. Also, most decent games need 128mb, and are starting to use 256. However, only a few, high end games use 512 and only for their absolute best settings. I'm pretty sure that Bryce doesn't benefit much at all from a good video card, Bryce is constrained by the CPU. If you are running a 1.6ghz machine, which is well out of date, spending more than $100 or so on a video card is a waste of money because any game that might benefit from a higher end card will be limited by the slower CPU. As a side note, if you have a 1.6ghz machine then you no doubt have an AGP slot for the video card (or PCI). PCI's are obsolete and you won't find many decent video cards there anymore. AGP is quickly going obsolete in new systems (almost entirely except really low end/inexpensive). The AGP is still selling a lot of replacement cards because of the huge quantity of people with 1-3ghz machines at home. A number of vendors have managed to find ways to make the high end cards work in AGP, however, Nvidia & ATI are focusing most of their efforts in making their new chips work on PCI-Express (PCI-X?). Hence, spending $250+ on a high end AGP card a) won't help much for rendering now b) won't help you much on gaming since your 1.6ghz machine is CPU limited at that point c) when you do decide to build/buy a new machine in 6-12+ months (lets assume post January when MS Vista comes out), you will probably end up buying a dual core chip, probably 64bit, and it won't even support AGP, just PCI-e. Of course, this means you can't just yank your fancy new, less than 1 year old video card out of this box and put in the new one if you build it. My suggestion, buy the 6200 for $70-120. Or a 6600 or 6800. But don't spend a lot (you can price shop at www.pricewatch.com).

Great design! I think it is pretty cool too. I'm not sure how structurally sound it would be in the current design. It needs an inner hub to mount it to the car with. It wouldn't be terribly easy to manufacture it either. Still, it is pretty cool, and its a shame that I can't get it through the guy I know that makes high end wheels. Not sure it is his style.

Good catch on the PCIe (pci express) instead of SLI. I knew it sounded wring as I typed it...at 2-3 am! I'm not sure there is any real benefit buying a 512mb video card for a non gamer at this point. In order to get the memory up and price down you will find the GPU speed and features reduced. You may be better off with a slightly higher end 256mb card.

I bought an Nvidia 6600GT back last January when the AGP version with 128mb came out. I paid about $125 US for it and I bought the XFX brand one since it was the only one at the time that supported dual DVI connections. I have been pretty happy with it and the only problem I have had I haven't investigated and I doubt it is a hardware problem you will experience now. A few thoughts: for Nvidia cards, the 6600 is the slower kin to the 6800. GT is the slightly faster version of the non GT version. The 6800 has been surpassed by the newer 7800s which are very expensive. 128mb is enough for most uses unless you are into gaming big time in which case, buy the 256mb version of the 6800. Obviously, if you have 700+ US you could buy the 512mb version of the 7800GTX or something. The 6600 and the 6800 come in AGP & SLI. AGP is the 'old' standard that the vast majority of computers have and support. If your motherboard is < 1 year old and was a pretty good machine it MIGHT support SLI. If not, AGP is probably what you have. The 6600/6800 are AGP 8x. Almost all newer cards are 8x. The 8x and 4x speeds I think are compatible, maybe...but I'd check on what you have. No sense in buying a better card if the mother board won't support it. Single monitor or dual? What kind? Most of the newer cards should support dual monitors. Decide if you want this feature. I find it to be very useful. I run dual 19" CRT monitors and when I bought the 6600 almost all models supported 1 CRT and 1 DVI. Many will come with an adapter (around $20) to convert a DVI to CRT in case you want dual CRTs (versus 1 CRT and 1 LCD flat panel which uses DVI). I KNEW I wasn't going to spend the $ for an LCD and I also wanted the 2 CRTs to be the same size. A 19" CRT is <$200. I love having both side by side, each running 1280x1024. By buying a video card that supported dual DVI (and came with 2 adapters) I could upgrade to dual LCDs if I wanted at a later date. Hard drives: everyone has their own preference on drives. My biggest suggestion since you are obviously weery of loosing data is to either backup to CD/DVD your important files, or buy an external drive or 2nd internal and have the 2 synced together so that if one dies the other one has all your data. You can always reinstall windows on a new drive, but having the backup data is good. Note: There is a new drive technology, SATA (serial ATA) that differs from IDE/EIDE drives that you already have. It is doubtful your motherboard will support a SATA drive. Likewise, if you spend big bucks on an IDE drive that is large and then buy/build a new computer in a year, it is likely that the new one won't easily support your 'old' IDE drive. Hence you may or may not want to invest in a big one or an internal. An external USB may be better. Or, find a used or small 80gb drive, internal, and manually backup your work folders every week or two onto it. It will be faster than a CD burner and easy to use. Check out some of the following 3 sites for good reviews and information on video cards. I prefer toms hardware, and they have some great benchmarking charts for video cards. www.tomshardware.com www.arstechnica.com (very geeky) www.extremetech.com

Sadly, there is a 64 bit XP and a 64 bit Win 2003 out there. But, as Erlik mentioned, not many drivers. A coworker just rebuilt his home system: dual core top of the line Athlon 64 bit, high end drives, motherboard, top of the line Nvidia card, etc. He was able to get his $150+ logitech eyeball cam working, printer, scanner, etc. All was fine...except that 1 application didn't work under 64 bit, the virtual private network (VPN) software required to connect to our employer's network. Thankfully he doesn't need to do it often and has 5+ other machines he could use. Until Vista is out and you have 'new' hardware that manufacturers readily support and write 64bit drivers for you may have problems. Side problem: you can not readily buy the 64 bit XP at a store. Microsoft is not selling it in boxed form and don't intend to. You can turn in your 32 bit license for a 64 bit license (1 direction only, no give backs) from Microsoft and possibly your hardware vendor if you bought from say, Dell. So, unless you are ready to save all your info on your hard drive, turn in your license, reformat to 64 bit and hope to hell it all works...I wouldn't recommend it. Yea, I know, sad. If I could get a true 64 bit OS (Windows, sorry) with full software support and hardware support I would upgrade my hardware and get the 64bit...but since I can't, I'll just wait a year to build a new system with Vista and new hardware then.

Ok, here is a different way to consider the problem. 1) the CPU generally speaking is not upgradeable. Doing so requires throwing away the old one (or giving away to another machine). Also, motherboards don't always accept the newest and greatest processor that you buy when it is 2 years old. So, a CPU is a 1 time purchase with no upgrade path. 2) RAM is upgradeable generally speaking. The speed/type is not (motherboard/chipset dependent), but the quantity is. If you have to sacrifice CPU or RAM, get the CPU now, get 'enough' ram and then upgrade later if need be. 3) While RAM prices will go up slightly over time for obsolete speeds/sizes (try finding PC100 memory that is new versus used), for the next 1-2 years, any current ram will get cheaper usually. i.e. buy 1gb now, buy a 2nd gig in 6 months if need arises and price permits 4) Buy the RAM in the biggest memory size you can reasonably afford. If your system supports 2 sticks, don't buy a 512mb now, this will limit your system to 1.5gb later (usually). Buy a 1gb stick. Likewise, buying a 'prebuilt' system means that if you buy a 1gb machine you will probably get screwed by only getting 2x512 versus 1x1024. So, do your homework if you are buying a prebuilt system. Dell and others unfortunately charge a hefty premium to give you the memory in 1 stick versus 1/2 of the total in each of 2 sticks. 5) Know the motherboard. Cheap machines that are prebuilt generally have space for 2 memory cards, most boards limit you to 1gb per stick (2gb sticks are very expensive and boards supporting them are not nearly as common). Hence your system will be limited to 2gb. If you plan to build your own, buy a board with 4 slots and if possible make sure the memory can be inserted 1 at a time (versus in pairs) and they don't have to be the same size. 6) If given a choice, do your research on memory speeds. Don't bother spending a premium on overclocked memory, but know the difference between pc2700 and 800mhz, etc. Great info at www.tomshardware.com. Faster RAM may be good for you (make sure the motherboard supports the speed RAM). 7) Consider hard drive speeds. SATA is better than IDE generally and 7200rpm beats 5400rpm. good luck Ryan

Good call Chris, you are write on the WinFS journaling. My mistake. Still, people should go for NTFS over FAT. Crazydawg: consider ordering online and having the memory shipped to you. It looks like I can buy a 1gb stick of PC2700 DDR for $60 US. 512 for $40.

Hey, fantastic artwork. I really liked your architectural work! I'll have to look at the rest of the pics later. Congrats on teaching yourself the basics of html. I'm glad to see you learned in notepad, etc. I use Dreamweaver at work a lot and it is great but many people who are not technical make the mistake of relying on the design mode of DW and similar apps and not learning the basics of HTML. It really helps to know what is happening behind the scenes in the html file.

Go with NTFS, or, install XP as FAT32 and then upgrade the partition to NTFS afterwards. It is pretty easy to do. As a whole, NTFS is the better way to go. The only significant compatibility problems you will have is with apps like Diskeepers' defragmenter and Partition Magic, and of course, only if they are really old versions. I believe NTFS also has what is called journaling. (though I may be mistaken). Journaling in a database system is used to keep track of all executed statements for recovery purposes. It also allows a system to do a multipass insert/update/delete. For instance, instead of just deleting something it would check the system, mark the file for deletion, save a record in the journal stating what would be deleted and what the data was, then asking the system if it was ready to delete. The system acknowledges, delete occurs and journal is marked as it being committed. If the system dies mid-stream than it back be reversed out. I suspect NTFS supports a similar feature. Either way, what is more important than Fat32 (do not run fat16!!) versus NTFS is a) making sure you have at least 256 mb ram, if not far far more, XP runs really poorly on just 256 b) loading all of the XP updates, including service pack 2 and all the updates afterwards. Failing to load the service packs IMMEDIATELY after loading XP is asking for problems. Unprotected and unfirewalled computers on the internet have been shown to be infected in one way or another within 25 minutes on average of being installed. Your best bet is to install XP offline (wire unplugged) and then plug in and install SP2 and updates. If you are behind a firewall/router this isn't quite as important. Either way, I'd go with no less than 384mb on an XP system, 512+ is obviously the right way to go. I run 1gb on my laptop and 756 on my desktop (haven't needed to upgrade it yet). RAM is cheap and will double the speed of a machine with 256 going to say, 512.

I think the coolest thing would be if Daz were to make the next Bryce version use both multiple processors and video cards for rendering, to disk or screen, preferably either. I've read articles talking about the massive computational capability of some video cards relative to rendering and one has to assume that just adding in the functionality into your system to utilize the video card for rendering would probably add a lot of horsepower to our systems. One benefit potentially of a dual core system is even if Bryce favors the 'first' core (assuming that Windows sees the system as 2 cores versus 1 combined) you could set other applications to use the 2nd core. Imagine having Windows and your other apps pushing CPU chores onto #2 freeing up cycles for Bryce on #1. All speculation of course.

I've read about the 64bit systems (www.tomshardware.com, www.extremetech.com, www.arstechnica.com) a lot and generally they are a bit faster but not much. Unfortunately, to get the true benefit one needs 2 things, a recompiled application (i.e. bryce) and a 64bit OS (new version of Windows XP) Unfortunately, Bryce isn't 64 bit and the 64 bit XP isn't readily available in the stores and you have to do a complete reinstall to get a 32 bit xp into a 64. To make matters worse, most 'old' peripherals don't have drivers for 64 bit XP. This means you may have things like digital cameras, scanners, printers, lan cards, etc. that may not work. Can you stick with a 32 bit XP or Win2K and go with a 64bit Athlon, sure. I am not sure if there is a big advantage, but if you are building new it may work out well if you get a dual core chip. I recommend building your own system if you are up to it. Its a bit more annoying at times and you may have some problems, but not having to worry about having a no-name brand cd burner, motherboard of unknown origin, etc. is nice. You know which manufacturers to go to for drivers and firmware.

Have you listened to any Enya music? She had a new CD come out last week and I've only had an hour to listen to it once since I bought it yesterday. Her website has some neat videos in low-res with her songs, very colorful.

Pidjy, Here is a thought, why not just sell them manually, cash/check. You could possibly even setup a paypal account. Forget the online transactions, etc. Find 2-4 people here, sell them a small subset (don't sell it all, its too easy for it to be hacked/traded on the web in mass) for a few dollars. Get them to vouch for the quality and maybe submit renderings of a few objects. Grow things slowly. Don't spend 100 hours building a fancy site with a shopping cart when all you need is a casual ftp program on your home machine (or a gmail account) and the ability to cash a check. Ask people to send your $20 in cash. If it takes off, use the first few buyers as seeds to determine pricing. Why hassle with a complex sales site to start. I just found DAZ, and while it may be an option, remember that they are probably going to want 20-40% of your sales (or more) and may require exclusivity on some of your models. If you do that, work out an agreement where you get the rights back from them (and they loose them) after X weeks of sales below a certain amount. i.e. if they stop promoting or sales aren't 5 units each per month than they have to stop selling and you get the rights back. The last thing you want to do is give up 100% of your copyright to Daz or a buyer for a lousy $20. You need to determine how licensing will work. If not, you may spend 30 hours of your time building a model and only making 1 sale for $20 on it....not a good hourly rate!

I'm pumped. I knew that Bryce was for sale (I've been out of the loop 6-12 months) and forgot all about it. Now I see DAZ has a slightly updated version for $100. For me, this is great, I've toyed with hacked copies a few years ago and bought a version 2 or 3 copy but never used it. Its been at least 2 years since I've actually touched Bryce.

Now I see DAZ's site and your model pictures and I'm pumped (until I see how badly my artistic skills really are!). The micro payment concept is great, afterall, at $2-10 each for a model it is an impulse item. Like the staircase? buy it. Like the train, buy it.

My suggestion, do as Claymor suggested. Build up a user base of interested people via Daz. Sell only some items. Build up your own site and offer items exclusively at both sites. Use Daz for cross promotional purposes to push people to your site for tutorials, whole CDs, etc. You might find that running a merchant account on your site doesn't pay for items selling less than a few dollars each. Use Daz for the low end items and to draw newbies like myself. Once we are comfortable with you we will use your site and you will get a higher % of the sale price.

Nice pictures, I'd buy the wizard's house and mystical pathway!

You were possibly hacked. I've read about (and one time it happened to me) being hacked as an ftp server. They take over part of your drive and the directories are usually very nested and each folder has a period in front of it. My suggestion, install/run 1-2 antivirus and 2-3 anti-spyware a few times and scan the drives like crazy. I typically run norton antivirus, spybot, ad-aware & MS's free antispyware app. Norton costs, the others are free.