Crashing and settings hard to manage

I am finding this First Look more difficult than I thought to get something nice to look at. The settings seem to take me too far in one direction or another and everything keeps looking either burnt out or dim. Things rez in the distance with a bang which makes me feel that SL is less real, not more real. And I am not sure what the Region default is anymore? Does it still set back to the default under the World Menu or does my fiddling with the Sky settings override that?

Anyway, its not comfy right now finding the look I like but I will persevere. So far I don't find things look as good as the old look because of how the textures look. Everything seems washed out and detail is less.

My drivers are newest available. And I have crashed within 10 mins of logging in when flying and looking at terrain below.

ASUS 200 Megahurtz mobo
2 G Ram DIMM
DUAL AMD 2.4 Gigahertz
nVidia GeForce 7950 w/ 1 G onboard Ram

I tried this client on Thursday AM. Very pretty, and dare is say it... stable from crashes, unlike the 'regular' client. I was fat, dumb and happy!

I logged off and went to lunch, came back and now when I try to use it, it gets to the VERY END of the load process, then just .... goes away? What's up with that?

I'm using version 1.16.0.62466

Thanks in advance for any help,
Pirate