can the new hair functions be used to create a convincing animal pelt - even one for use on a humanoid figure? The animalizations I have seen from prior releases all leave a great deal to be desired. Based on the hair growth pattern included in this image, would a GOOD pelt be do-able?

Yes, I would think so. It'll take quite a bit of grouping, and you'd need a fairly powerful system to handle all that fur, but it should be do-able. I intend to give Florence a pelt eventually. I'll likely start with just her forearms as a test run, and if things work well, move on to other parts of her body. I achieved a very interesting fuzzy effect with displacement mapping alone this morning, but I don't believe it would be useful as-is.

Well, I'm currently mugging the local pimps and drug dealers, so I will shortly be able to afford a top-of-the-line graphics-oriented heavily frankensteined Dell ;) Hopefully that'll take care of the power issue. Given what I am reading here of the security measures in P5 - linking a copy to the harddrive - I'll have to wait on the upgrade before buying P5 (unless I am misunderstanding something.

It is the system I.D. from what I understand, not the hard drive. If it was the hard drive you could just move the drive to another system or even use something like Norton Ghost to copy it. You should be able to use the same number even if you format your drive and start over. My computers are all built ground up by me, and I am still able to use these types of copy protection even after formatting my drives, which I do frequently due to the crap that accumulates. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Marque