Looking for Photomatix tips

Hi everyone,
I've tried to use Photomatix a few times now and have not been impressed with the results compared to some of the examples I'm seeing online. Are there certain tips/tricks I should know about? I've been using 3 exposures, is this enough? I only have the trial version of Photomatix and I don't want to do some of the adjustments because it puts a watermark on the photo. I'll be picking up CS3 next week, does this have a HDR component to it?

just make copies of the photos you want to use and then use those to hdr/tone map

Three exposers is quite often enough and I generally go +/- 2 stops with the camera in continuous drive mode. Try keeping your results more within a natural look without over doing the tone mapping. Often too I use just the Tone Compressor option.

A very good HDR tutorial can be found at http://www.hdrphotos.n​et/

What you will see in this tutorial is that even true HDR images can still benefit from post processing in PS. Sometimes, the resulting image from the HDR specific softwares can be on the flat side. Also, it gives you a good understanding of the number of exposures needed and the correct spacing.

Yahoo Flickr has a number of HDR forums where information and examples (both good and not so good) can be found:

http://www.flickr.com/​groups/hdr/discuss/
http://www.flickr.com/​groups/artizenhdr/
http://www.flickr.com/​groups/easyhdr/
http://www.flickr.com/​groups/qtpfsgui

Links to specific HDR softwares are as follows:

http://www.hdrsoft.com​/ (Photomatix @ ~$100)
http://www.supportingc​omputers.net/ (Artizen @ ~$60)
http://www.easyhdr.com​/ (easyHDR @ ~$25)
http://qtpfsgui.source​forge.net/#download (free HDR software)

The free qtpfsgui software might be something you want to look into before buying a commercial license for any of the others. It might be tough to "cut your HDR teeth on" with this one, but it is free and may tell you if HDR is want you really want/need. For tone mapping single raw files, LightZone image editor (http://www.lightcrafts​.com/index.php) works best in my opinion.