We decided to let people put images in their sig files. Which many have done, and since it allows for total custom choice of images it's way more flexable then the avitars. So we went with the sig files.
Also the Avatars would be served off our own server. a few k multiplied by many thousands of veiws a day would have a bandwidth impact, and we try to keep costs down, even with little things like this.
Myriads