Bob, Aha! Thanks for unravelling that mystery - that website is a perfect example of a great idea badly executed. First of all the index is tiny, repetitive and very dull to hunt through, then you have to fill your shopping basket, go to your email account, save the attachment zip file, extract the zipe file, then go into each file's folder to get to the actual skp component.... and then they're almost uselessly high poly! Many 3D download sites are moving towards drag and drop files into SU for crying out loud! Still, I got a couple of nice accurate WCs which I'll remodel to about 1/10th of the poly number. Thanks for explaining that to me,

Very Interesting!

Hmm interesting, though 300 dollar sounds unreal. Seeing every country has it's own edge network (I think??) or something similar. But for me the Iphone is off the map, it's been overhyped anyway. Everyone will be running around with one soon. I am considering getting an Ipod Shuffle though.

Well I got my camera tonight. It is too late to break it out and have fun so I will do that tomorrow then we leave Friday for 9 days. Disney here we come. I was still on the fence between the Panasonic and the Canon. Well I found a fourth store here in town today that had a Panasonic Lumix TZ3 on display and guess what, the automatic lens cap was broken. That is 3 out of 4 displays with a broken lens. Decision made. I went with the Canon ELPH SD 800 IS. The 900 I was looking at earlier had more megapixels but did not have the image stabilization and I wanted that. So... I will give a more detailed review in the coming weeks. Thanks a million to all who contributed and made me think hard about it. Cheers.

Edson> If you ever have any textures that you would like to have done, I would be happy to do them for you.. Richard Rio Rancho, NM, USA

Thats so cool, I'm gona get one for my mate, he can put it on the floor of his boat and watch the fishes through it. I'll tell you what, I bet Velux are sweating it, this could kill their entire product range over night

How about free laserscan software? all you need is a cheap laser. poster-LMNO

Ha Ha. My daughter is afraid of the dark too. Adding a fish tank did the trick.

if you could get the camera lens to take perspective off, and make a straight on photo, without distortion.

You know, Tina. some 10 or 100 thousand years ago, when we were sneaking behind those deers, mammoths, whatever - we hated other animals of pray doing the same thing behind us... That's it...

Something to watch for... First the background: The Nintendo Wii game system uses bluetooth communications between its controllers and the console. There have been people who have created drivers for computers to allow the Wii controllers to be used with your computer. For instance with the appropriate driver installed and a bluetooth adapter, you can use a wireless Wii wand controller instead of a mouse. Now here's what to watch for: Nintendo have developed a new foot-pad controller for the game system. They call it the "Wii Balance Board". It looks like an electronic bathroom scale. It is far more advanced than a bathroom scale in the way it is pressure sensitive. They already have developed demo programs for it where you your weight transfer from foot to foot is used to intuitively control a game character's horizontal movement allowing the character to head-butt soccer balls. They also have a yoga and exercise 'game' that uses it. So... You can expect the same folks who developed the computer drivers for the wand controller will likely create computer drivers for the foot-pad. Then if you have a bluetooth adapter on your computer you should be able to use this sophisticated touch-sensitive device as an input device. With it you probably won't have to move your foot at all -- just shift your weight around. It should basically work like the control system on a Sagway that senses weight transfer. Could be cool! Regards, Ross

Too bad it does not seem to be wireless. Interesting though...

Wow really? ive bought tons of stuff from there and never had a bad part. Ive had ton of friends who have bought stuff and the worst ive ever seen was a MOBO that was DOA. You must have bad luck

Yours welcome darling

@pmiller said: Lewis, Indeed many rendering apps can multi-thread, but my understanding is that no 3D modeling application does ... I'm sure I saw a vid the other day demonstrating the capabilities of 3DSMax 9, which seemed to be using multiple processors as well as being 64 bit capable.

Hi guys thanks for your input - I will order the ATI 512 MB, the dealer (very tech savvy guy) said it outperforms the ATI tenfold... Well and since it's only 200,- € more, no big brainer... I'll tell you how it works. Cheers Wolfram

is there a nuclear version ??

nixone, good choice there, comments below @unknownuser said: Intel Core 2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB) 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs 128MB nVidia GeForce 8300 GS 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic Single Drive 16X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) w/ double layer CPU: Quad core will future proof you somewhat if you're not going to be upgrading again in the next 12 - 18 months. Just be aware that not all software can make use of additional cores, SketchUp are one of those that don't. Having said that, you'll be able to run SU together with other apps with ease. Most rendering apps can make use of additional cores, depends on how much rendering you do. RAM: RAM does play a role in computing speed, but the general public probably won't notice the difference in their everyday use of a PC. You might want to upgrade to 4GB of RAM at some point using that resource hog called Vista. RAM timings (CL ratings) is another thing that influences RAM performance, the lower the CL rating the better the RAM, for DDR2 667 RAM you should have either 3-3-3-8 or 4-4-4-12 timings, any higher than that and you've bought some slow RAM. GFX card: Not a bad choice I would have looked at a nVidia Geforce 8500 / 8600 though, depending on your needs, something with some more onboard memory would have been better. Personally I prefer ATi GFX cards due to better image quality. HDD: Not much info given here, but that should serve you well, I only use Western Digital drives though. OS: MS Windows Vista Home Basic. Hmmm, take a look at the features, don't know if it'll be the right choice (IIRC there are something like 11 diffrent versions). If I bought Vista tomorrow it'll be the Business edition, at the very least. Optical drive: Should serve you well, my brand of choice is Sony here. Motherboard: You've made no mention on which motherboard you're getting, this is one of the more important components in a PC. If the mobo isn't any good the PC may very well be unstable and perform poorly. Monitor: LCD monitors need to have a response time of less or equal to 5ms to be any good, any higher and you might experience ghosting. Hope the comments above helped somewhat and didn't confuse you further.

I've found myself doing it in autocad recently...

Thanks for the heads up. I will be looking for a new camera soon.