Quote - maybe I miss spoke  - sorry.

apparently with Daz Studio you can export bvh file for use in Second Life and Hexagon 2.5 has the SL primitives.

That's not an exclusive Daz Studio problem. SL can import any BVH file.  The primatives are a special kind of TGA file. There is no way you could ever export any usefull model from Poser/DS into SL using this method.

Linden Labs are very lax about copyright infringement, and they have always been that way. It's the number one complaint from SL community and it comes up over and over on their forums. It's an unfortunate fact of life that a few 100 users, out of millions, can cause so much grief. Pretty much the same that I have heard of Poser users who post copyright material on Taiwan or Russian website.

The TC2 converter will probably dissapear when Daz gets enough heat put on them. But don't expect to get any response from LL. They are quite happy to sit back and turn a blind eye as long as they are making money.

Just a thought on quality. Even with the TC2 program I don't think the textures simply converted from Poser could be as good as the ones made by the top designers in SL because of the way the lighting is handled.  The limited lighting in SL means that the best textures have a lot of shading 'baked' in. A flatter texture designed for Poser to do the lighting will look kinda flat. I have tried making textures for both and found that creating a texture that looks reasonable in Poser is far easier than creating one that looks good in SL. (I use the term 'good' very loosly here given my limited PS skills). 

Quote -
Not only was the computer I received substandard because the graphic card blew up within hours.

That's a common thing in new computers. If something is going to blow up, it usually happens within the first day or so. Hence the short warranty of 30 days on a lot of equipment. If it lasts that long then usually it's good for a few years.

With Dell you get what you pay for. I suspect that most people buy from the Dell Home PC site and do not get the additional warranty. What you get for free is almost nothing. Pay the bit extra then you get tech support (from Texas, not India) and guaranteed service, usually NBD or less.
   Just for the record I build my own PC's but have also bought a couple of ex-lease PC's from Dell off E-Bay. A 2 or 3 year old computer for about $200 is good for the wife or home render farm.

I took a look at Micro$oft to see what they have to say. Basically here's a quote of how their licensing works.

*For most currently shipping Microsoft software with processor limits, each processor counts as a single processor regardless of the number of cores and/or threads that the processor contains. For example, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition can be used on a four-processor system, whether the processors in the system are single-core, hyperthreaded, or multicore.

This would indicate that there is a difference between the Intel Quad Core and the AMD Quad Core. The Intel is 4 cores on one physical chip but the AMD is 2 dual cores on 2 chips. From an OS standpoint you should be able to run 8 Intel cores (on 2 chips) but only 4 AMD cores (also on 2 chips).

Just curious, but how does the OS see the Dual and Quad processors? I am assuming that XP sees the dual core as a single processor. If it doesn't then what are you going to run as an OS on a quad core system? XP only supports 2 processors, which I assume means it will run 2 x dual cores. If it's really 4 seperate cores then you will have to run a server OS to fully support them.

I too have a budget for this hobby. But compared with how much I spend on gas, food, telephone, cable TV and other 'essentials', (including my wife) it's insignificant. $0.85 is less than you would pay for anything at a fast food place and loads less than a cup of anything from $tarbucks! But this is a good point. I have a feeling there are some people who suffer from 'Poser Addiction' and just have to buy. They probably also download every bit of freestuff they can.

$0.85 - Almost any character is worth that. Same with most of the other DAZ sale items. I may not have a use for them right this minute, but sometime in the future I might. I would hate to need say 'the biplane' in a few months and have to pay full price knowing I could have got it for less than a dollar. And you just know that sooner or later that's going to happen!

This is always a problem. The infinite combination of calibrations, video cards and monitors makes exact matching a real problem. About 6 months ago, I purchased a video card and flat screen monitor with a digital connection. For me this seems to have made a big difference as there is no calibration to do and my work looks much the same on other monitors.

This sound true, I don't think I have ever made a transaction at DAZ without filling it out to over $10. Long term this might not work so well, as I am sure there are many of us out here who will eventually own everything in the Platimum Club.

Search the web and download a program called AdAware. It will search your entire PC and let you remove all the annoying spyware programs.

Thanks everyone. The .obj in question was actually a figure, not a prop. Deleting the old .rsr did the trick. I should have tried that before posting here.. feel like a real fool now. Because this worked I have another question.. What IS in the .rsr file and what is it for? The fact that Poser needs them and creates them if they are missing suggests it is some kind of compiled shortcut. Looking at the contents, even with a hex editor, doesn't reveal much. It's interesting that they are all about the same size. The only exception I have found is the main POSER.RSR file. If you delete that one... oops poser cannot rebuild it.

This is the same attitude that caused all the nonsense over Micro$oft giving away IE for free. True, there was some alterior motive there but it seems that some people just don't want anything to be free.

Thanks. I have read that the performance of the 8500 is actually better than the 9000. So when ATI start to dump the 8500 in favor of the new card it should be possible to pick up a real bargain.

Thanks people. The VXG1 is the card I was thinking about... sounds like I will have to re-think that strategy. Any other card from 3D Labs is out of my price range, the same goes for the GeForce 4 I'm afraid. If the 4 works, I wonder if the GeForce 3 Ti 200 works. Anybody have one?

I agree with everyone else, turn off OpenGL. Also you mention that your video card uses shared RAM - yuck. For a real video dependant program like VUE you need a decent video card. If your job depends on it, get a 3DLabs card that has OpenGL IN THE HARDWARE - not just one that SUPPORTS OpenGL. GeForce cards only support OpenGL, so you should turn it off if you go with one of those. Also, use Win2K or XP. Win9x can only support 128Mb of RAM per running application so even if you have 512Mb or RAM, VUE will only be using 128Mb.