you probably want to lower your lowest LOD a lot- it's the one that gives you the most bang for your LI buck, and a _lot_ of things are done such that it's set to 0 (which is good and bad)
(you just crank the scrolly bar next to it in the uploader to 0 and it'll put it at 3-8 or something like that- there are more responsible ways to do that, but a lot of people don't do them, and they're a bit
more complicated for your first mesh object, it involves making simpler models for different LODs and uploading them in the uploader for that particular LOD)
Ah ty! www.plurk.com/Allegory I'm playing with that and it's much better now. I've played around with 3d modeling a bit, but not for SL so I didn't have to worry about poly counts and stuff.