I'm wondering if there's a better way to make a good smoke trail?

Right now I've got a cloud object as a child to a particle emitter. I figure it won't be done with the render until after the weekend. And from what I do see, I'm not sure if it's rendering the way I'd like. (So I'd have to postwork on it anyways.)

I'd really like to use an experimental falloff shader I got from SparrowHawke3D, but it has a bug or two and causes reflections or areas of complex light interactions to black out. If it wasn't for that, I think it'd be ideal and a lot faster than the clouds...

Only other thing I could think of is to paint a grayscale image of a "poof" and use that to control alpha on a particle's shader. But I suspect it'd look too repetitive.

Basically I need something to get the particles fuzzy/cloudlike, but not take forever like the clouds nor distinctively particles/spheres that look like the default emitter settings.

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Barbequed Pixels?

Your friendly neighborhood Wings3D nut.
Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.