Micha's starter kit

[Caranarq]

Hi everyone!
I've been reading many posts and tutorials 'cause I am a complete begginner. To give you an idea, my last render was made in Autocad 2006.
Now to the point, I'm trying to follow Micha's starter kit tutorial (http://asgvis.com/index.php?option=c...amp;Itemid=247), the thing is there are some broken links; at the first paragraph in the question mark about HIghRes HDRI:
http://www.asgvis.com/VfRtw/bin/edit...=VfR.TutorialL
And at the last paragraph:
http://www.asgvis.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=631
Please, could anyone fix them?
Thanks in advance!
Carlos.

[Caranarq]

Micha´s starter kit

Now that we're in this, I have some more questions.

I'm trying to set up a "Material test" scene. Here's the one I made:
http://rapidshare.com/files/168657139/Basica.skp

I'm using Chicago Loop HDR for the environment and background maps:
http://www.3dvalley.com/textures.shtml

These are my render settings:
http://rapidshare.com/files/168659692/Basica.visopt

And here's the question:
It takes toooo much for rendering. I'm running a P4 2.4ghz 512mb RAM. An 120 x 90 Pixels render took 7:50 minutes. Too much for a test render.
Where can I look for settings for test renders?

I did setup the scene as explained in http://asgvis.com/index.php?option=c...d=29&Itemid=57, but then when I rendered the image and it came out all black. Then, clicked the "next" button and found the basic scene setup, put my two rectangular lights, searched for HDR tutorials, adjusted the Physical Camera's Shutter Speed and Multipler values for HDRs, then I realized It was too much info and that I did not know what were going on ???, so I came here to ask