There was mention in a thread on another forum that Quaxi was going to put the ability to change the loading music into SimPe. Then it was going to be in a future version.  Haven't been back to that forum to see if that thread is even still there.  I hope he does include that feature, I like the original tune best.
I'll be real interested to find out if anyone has any other way to do this, too!!

And it works like a charm, as I had to do that more times than I would like to admit!! 

I ended up disabling the hyperthreading because of the performance hit.  It slowed down everything so bad I could hardly use the pc at all.  After the disable, all my programs run smooth and fast like they should.  Don't know if that would help you any, but it sure did make a difference for me.  I'm sure there is something I missed in how to use hyperthreading, but it just wasn't worth my time to try to figure it out.  Just lazy, I guess...

What do you use in place of the green olive in a chocolate martini?  Chocolate kiss wouldn't go with the "theme" very well.  Maybe one of those Rocher things?  I'm sure I brutalized the spelling, don't happen to have an empty wrapper to look at...

The replacement I've been using, has blonde hair in the thumbnail; but every single one of the ailien kids has black hair.  Even the ones born to sims with blonde hair.  I never gave this any thought until this thread.  I'd love different hair colors on them too.
I think I might be almost brave enough to try some of this changing defaults stuff...

I paired him up with a CAS female who was really pretty, and they had 2 of the fugliest simkids I've ever seen.  Sorry no pics....

It's funny that everyone who has a 5200 video card says they suck.  That's what I have (with 256 mb ram) and it is so much better than the 440 MX GeForce I had before.  My daughter has a 5700, and other than not having to change the graphics rules file for bump maps, I really can't see much difference.  Perhaps because the video is the best component in her system and the worst in mine?  Not sure, but I am looking forward to upgrading, and seeing how much better it can be.

Thanks to everyone for the wealth of information in this thread!!!

I ended up deleting the others and keeping the ones that Melodie did for all age groups; just seemed easier that way to me.  Most of the hair that I did, had the family numbers ok so I just left them alone.  There were a few that didn't transition correctly, but not enough to make me want to fix it...

Once again, thanks Stitches.  I should have realized that 3.0 and 3000 were the same, guess I wasn't thinking that simplistically.
My pc now has considerable heating issues.  I've got a hard drive cooler on it, as well as a fan blowing thru the case.  Sometimes it just stops, and everything is frozen.  I think it might be from the CPU, since the harddrive no longer gets that hot.  Since one of the AMD strong points is less heat, I want to try that.  I'm sure that part of my problem is the small form factor case, it might be great for a casual user, but I spend waaaay too much time on this thing...

I've been doing a lot of reading and research on this subject, and found that AMD is being consistently rated higher than Intel cpus.  I've got a 3.0 ghz P4 now, and have no idea which AMD will be about equal.  And is the "dual core" or "64" similar to Intel's "hyperthreading"?  I ended up disabling the hyperthreading, since it slowed everything down substantially.  Must have missed something there...
Off to check out tomshardware, thanks, Stitches!

Wow, nectere, that looks like a great system you'll have!!  I want to end up with something similar, incorporating a lot of the parts I already have.    I went from a geforce MX400 also, but only up to a 5200 with 256, and that was also pretty amazing.  I got a different one, I can't remember if it was a 6200 or 6600, but it was incompatible with the motherboard and now everything is kind of wonky even with it removed.  That serves me right for not doing the proper amount of research!

Does anyone know if there is a chart somewhere that will compare CPUs and video cards?  I mean compare Intel to AMD and NVidia to AtI? I want to upgrade and change to AMD and ATI, but also don't want to end up with less than what I've got now.

I agree!  I have all slim sims, sims with gorgeous hair (no gray), sims with houses that have different rooms painted different colors, and sims with furniture that matches.  And in my "real game" they all have great looking clothes too.  That game has a 3.3gb dl folder and takes 7 minutes to load.  The "first alternate" game I'm using now has only downloaded hair and hacks, and loads in less than 2 minutes.

I really loved dincer's  lightwood set for sims 1, and downloaded it right after I found it for sims 2.  that was right about the time that Motoki was starting the polygon awareness.  I had noticed the slowdown and everything and started checking.  It all had to go.... much faster now, and I'm more careful now about meshes.

And it was just dumb luck, too, not any great searching skills on my part.

Hey myskaal!!!  check this out:  http://my.so-net.net.tw/swordw/others.html

Dincer's stuff is gorgeous, but some of the poly counts are astronomical....

For as much hair as TSR has, not much comes up when you sort by "male".   I've got no clue how long I've had it, just that I binned it on December 9th.

This will bug me until I find it...the original file backup has a date of July 2005.  Hard telling how many sites have closed and/or reorganized since then. 

That's the same name I've got.  I even went to most of the sites I get hair from and looked, but nothing.

I have this one, too, with no indication where it came from as well.  Would the file names help you out any?  Or are you looking to download everything new?

We need a program like the "whatused" one for Sims 1.  Told you every item being used in each neighborhood, then you could make .far files of it all and name them after the negihborhood.  Decide which neighborhood you wanted to play and put in the right download file.  And yes, I even had a sheet of paper for each neighborhood with a chart of which families lived in which lot... With everything in the game at the same time, it took 45 minutes to load; and that was minimized!  There is no way I can even begin to say that I am not a downloadaholic...

Should happen now, since there is a rumor that hell has frozen over, because the Seahawks have made it to the SuperBowl....

I waffled between changing it to 0.3 or 0.2.  Finally decided on 3 because somewhere I read recommended it.  Naturally,  the 2 setting would have been better.  Will change it before I play next, that's for sure.

C&C is still around, but doesn't do things for TS2.

That is even better, Inge!!!  Wonder how I missed that???