Daz,
I think I can speak for at least most of the MARSupials when I say we are quite addicted to this site...at the very least, quite committed. The majority of us came from another, now defunct, sci-fi site called Eon-4. It was quite an ambitious adventure that failed because of the mismanagement of its parent company. Several of the fans got together and decided they could do something just as good. MarsDawn was born. Another group of fans who were not really interested in production have committed ourselves to support the site. (Moral support and readership - not financial support.) Now that MarsDawn is becoming more popular through postings in Yahoo and "Cool Site of the Day" it is becoming even more fun throught influx if new ideas and new participants.
Personally, I'm a scientist from Texas. I use a Mac with Netscape at the office. At home, I have a Pentium machine with Win'95 and MSIE. The only problems I have with slowness are with some of the graphics and then only at peak (US) hours and certainly no more that with any other site. We would certainly welcome new participants from Australia. Besides the additional cultural points of view that would give us another time zone in which to participate.
Oh, by the way (BTW), Welcome to MarsDawn. You, yourself, are a welcome addition here. We use to have a journalist participating here, but he hasn't stopped by in quite awhile. Maybe I'll see if I can wake him up.
If you have more questions, just ask.
---
Zero
O=o