I kinda' went through all this when 2.42 came out, after several tries & downloads it still would not work properly in my machine. very slow & clunky. I asked at the "blender artist forum" [elysiun]. not much help. [I guess they meant well but no answers that I understood] so I left it at that. I past up 2.43, now I try 2.44 w/ the microsoft download etc. it would not really open. I have 2.41, aside from it won't invert zoom,[very annoying after so many yrs.] it works, but it doesn't do bump map stuff like the optimized 2.37a that I use. I'm not very good w/ all this tech stuff, I'm just an old artist that has been enjoying blender for about 5 yrs.  It was always a simple download & worked fine right off. I'm gonna continue to use & enjoy my 2.37.
   my machine is about 2 yrs old w/ the current set-up....XP professional...AMD 64  3200cpu....2gig of ram. I had this machine built to play w/ my blender animations & it does fine. I would love to try some of the new stuff.  I've considered getting a new machine built but at this point I'd be afraid I'll lose what I have working now.  any help would be greatly appreciated, but please don't go too techno on me. like I said I'm just an old artist......thanx.......johnd   

if a 2 year old machine is slowing up with internet downloads, the problem is probably spyware, unless your on dialup.   the quality of the machine realy doesnt effect how fast it downloads stuff.  however, 2 gigs of ram and a 3200 isnt bad. i usulay work with less than 1 gig of ram (500 mb used by windows. )  and i consider my computer realy fast.  if you want your computer to run alot faster, just reinstall windows and get an external hard drive to back everything up that you absolutly need.    otherwise, download spywareblaster and spybot sd

downloading isn't my problem. the program don't work once I have it. I have spybot. yes I'm still dial-up. speed is not a problem either.
P.S. I have some great animations that I've synched up w/ a music program I have called "fruityloops" [inspired by animusic]...do I need a site of my own to link to?...I had a site for a few years "johndsigns" but I let it go because of little traffic, it was mostly blender stuff.....thanx.........johnd

My main computer is 5 years old now with 2.5 ghz memory and 768 ram.  The current version of blender seems to run just fine on that (and my much slower laptop), so I suspect it's not your computer but some sort of setting.  Could you be more specific about what isn't working?

Edit:  Just a thought, if the interface is running slowly you may need to update your graphics card driver.

if spybot isnt catching your problem, then it could be a virus or just the fact that spybot has been falling behind.  download a couple other ones.  but... i'd recomend just reinstalling windows and backing up your stuff(or attempting a switch to linux).  reinstalling has a number of advantages anyway- you get rid of junk on the drive that you cant find or delete that you dont need that takes up lots of gigs of space, you end up removing lots of the start up programs, and everything is nice and clean and works realy well.

I once had a very slow blender version that was caused by opengl  problems I then installed an optimized build of the same version and it worked like a dream, so my guess is trying to find a optimized build that works with your gfx card.

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos

hey, "ysvry", thanx for the tip. I did a search over at the forums & came up with an optimized 2.43. I loaded it & so far it seems to be working pretty good. the invert zoom doesn't seem to work, which is annoying just because of what I'm used to for so long & "Q" doesn't give me a "Quit blender". but it seems like it wants to work. I haven't really given it a work out yet, but this is better than nothing. I'll have to try an optimized 2.44 when someone builds one..........thanx again.........johnd
P.S. I have a G-Force graphics card, could that have been the problem?

yah, they keep moving the q -uit button because it gets annoying to work and accidentaly hit it and bam lose all your work.  the if you have antialaising set on on your card, it makes blender appear fuzzy, but other than that, i've never experienced any other probs

I think quit is now Ctrl-q (or maybe alt).  What do you mean by zoom invert?

yep, it's Ctrl-Q, thanx.....ever since I first used blender, Ctrl+ middle button=closer when you moved the mouse forward & farther when you moved the mouse back.[2.37 works that way] since 2.41 it has been opposite. I assumed "invert zoom" which is in the top panel [pull down] "view & controls" [swap mouse zoom controls,when moused over] would reverse that & go back to the older way that I was more familiar with. but it doesn't seem to do anything. it's something I can get used to, just sometimes when I get working fast, I forget & zoom the damn thing right out of site & have to stop & re orientate where the heck I am! ........thanx again.....johnd

The button seems to invert the way the mouse wheel zooms only.  You're right, though, the way the control-middle button works seems backwards.  It would probably drive me nuts if I didn't have the mouse wheel.  Maybe you should suggest to the developers that they make it work for that too, not just the mousewheel.

ok,that's weird....I just happen to have a mouse w/ a wheel, usually I have gone through the trouble of finding 3 button mouses [mice?] & buying 3 at a time,because they were usually the cheapest made & hard to find, just because of blender.  the wheel, for me, never felt as steady..... the wheel seems to do all sorts of things in combination w/ Ctrl or Shift.   all new to me. lotsa' new stuff to learn it seems. thanx again..........johnd 

Attached Link: http://cobalt3d.free.fr/images_3dblender/kerkythea/documentation/Blender2Kerkythea_en.htm

here is a link to a for me working 2.44 optimized version and it has added funtionality that it exports to kerkythea.

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos

hey, thanx again, but to be honest with you, it all looks a little beyond me right now. I'm still stumbling around in 2.43, getting the feel of it. I've worked mostly in 2.37 with animations recently & most of those work much differently if at all in 2.43. also I'm finding that alot of my older blend files will need alot of tweeking just to get a decent render.
P.S. I checked out your free stuff site also,cool................thanx again..............johnd 

stop saying thx, youre welcome, just share some  knowledge yourself ;)

for some free stuff i made
and for almost daily fotos

gladly.............like?

You mentioned that you are a user of several years, what is the easiest way to learn this program. I have opened up the program six times, looked at the interface and closed it. Opening up my Rhino seems so much easier. My goal is to create high definition animations of city and highway driving animations. I have been told that the game engine is not what I want to use, stick to the built in renderer or the Yafray or Kerky. Any suggestions?

vkirchner, there's a helpful beginner book about Blender in PDF format.

http://www.cdschools.org/cdhs/site/default.asp

Click "Academics" and then "Drafting Technology".

It clarified some basic problems for me. On the other hand, there's a lot of tutes in Blender's own site.

(yeah, I have mentioned this already in other thread, so sue me... :) )

Btw, if you have figured out Rhino, Blender is not so much more difficult; it just has it's "own logic". Persist -- it will be easier after some mistakes.

Too bad that the best first steps guide to Blender is in Finnish... >:-D

most of what I learned was from the tutorials,I would download & print them.  I kept a list near by as I learned the keyboard stuff.  once I had some basics, I would just go in & pull some verts around & see what happens. I'm not at all familiar w/ the game stuff.  I tried yafray some but prefer the internal renderer, it's just easier for me. I've played w/ a few other 3d apps. I felt they were like corel,"clunky". I personally like the creative freedom blender gives me. very fast & efficient. once you "get it" your gonna like it.   I've purchased both manuals [mostly to support blender]   I personally found them difficult to follow. maybe just cause I'm old.  [I found the graphic work in the 2.0 guide some of the best  I've seen] 

@DoomsdayRenderer - Yes, I found that book on Friday, I printed it out to see if I can follow along. Oh, I figure that there will be a lot of mistakes made before I get done. I always figured out the first thing they should teach you in a manual is how to delete, but no one evers does. LOL! @dsigns - I plan to stick with the internal renderer unless someone can point out a good reason to start with another renderer based on the type of animation that I want to do. I have not found a comparison sheet between the renderers, so a quick question to the Masters can sometimes removed weeks of testing. I ordered the new Blender book, but it will be a while till it get's here. I started to look at the video's, but got fed up with switching between the video and then back to the program. So last night I hooked up an old CRT beside the LCD display so I can keep the training video on the CRT next to the program. Life is good. :-))

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2670863

> Quote - I have not found a comparison sheet between the renderers

oodmb wrote one :)

Any feedback on Kerkythea as a renderer, they have a Metropolis Light Transport which could help my architectural scenes? http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=76 The above link is very good, I will print that out for reference. Thanks, right now I am playing with the Monkey head. LOL!

vkirchner, Indigo has MLT. Not that I'm competent enough to compare, but at least some Indigo architectural gallery is quite impressive:

http://www2.indigorenderer.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=26&g2_itemId=13

Thanks DoomsdayRenderer, I have heard also that Indigo can take a long time to render, but with my modeling skills I am not yet able to put a real model to the test. More videos to go, so to speak.

vkirchner, as a newbie myself, I can relate. Great thing is, there is huge amount of information available for a Blender user. Not so with some commercial apps.