thanks everyone :). Been reading through the forums, its a very nice community here, im looking forward to getting some crits on my work :D

If your laptop's HD is partitioned, and windows and the installer is on a separate drive, you could assign the windows scratch disk/performance to another drive, and that may provide a little boost...

just wanted to say hi, im new to the forum. Used to use Maya in college, then got a job using 3dsmax and lost my Maya groove, trying to get it back :D