I don't mind the long render times, but what I would like to improve is the amount of time it takes Poser to load new figures or or display the contents of a library. Does anyone know any tricks for doing this? (other than buying a faster computer or upgrading)

For example, I once read that storing textures outside of the Runtime directory will speed things up. I'm kind of skeptical of this one because even figures that do not have any textures assigned take about the same amount of time to load as textured ones. But I can't say I have tested this.

Correct refference program helps speed things up. Defragging your hard drive , Leaving a good amount of free hard drive space ( I like 20 gigs or more )

Best to keep the textures in the runtime poser gets really narked when you move them out, what tasquah said is very good advice to follow too. If you have an NT based windows (XP/Win2k) you can use Task Manager to raise poser's priority to Above Normal when it's running, this will assign it more processor time which speeds it up slightly. Don't go over Above Normal or Windows may start acting up. Memory is another good thing to have lots of, all versions of Poser like to have plenty of Ram to spread out in so the more you feed it the better it'll behave :)

I like 20 gigs or more ???!!! My entire hard drive is less than 20 gigs! :P For clearing a little room, however, I've found that most Poser files except the textures compress down like nobody's business, because they're mostly text. Zip up the ones you don't need for a while, delete the unzipped verions, free up 50% or more of the space. :)

Ive also found that if you assign free hard drive space as virtual memory, and get the memory update from curious labs, it will let you use free hard drive space as virtual memory, I have about 3 gigs of memory this way. ;)