Partially fixed. I am getting textures loaded now -- I was trying to load a BMP, which was throwing an error for some reason (it never told me this when trying to apply a texture, only when I decided to try and set it as a background). I changed it to a GIF and I can load it.
So, I broke down and just bought the thing... I'm already hooked!
I downloaded the extension pack, but I still can't load PNG files as a texture (it says there is no plugin). I looked, the file is in the plugins directory. Is there something more I need to do in order to load a PNG? I can load JPGs (another plugin), but not sure why it isn't picking up the PNG loader.