Digital BW, The Print

I'm interested in two main areas for the 1280 pc for the new curves 
(4/22/02). BTW, I'm using Eclipse Satine 190 gms:

1) About how does each curve print wrt each other. Especially which 
curves posterise least, and how would you rank them from warmest to 
coldest. I asked this question before, and got a response or two. Now 
there are new curves.

2) I assume the RGB color space to convert to is Adobe RGB. However, 
from reading past posts on Paul's curves, I'm not sure there was ever 
a resolution on whether the original greyscale file should have it's 
profile dropped upon opening, or converted to greyscale gamma 2.2 
(the pshop 5 default).

I recently changed my default monitor greyscale profile from a custom 
dotgain curve to 20%, when I discovered that my new monitor was 
matching the print better at the simpler 20%. However, with Paul's 
curves, when dropping the 20% dot gain profile, then converting to 
sRGB from a default gamma 2.2 greyscale profile as defined by the 
pshop 5 default space, I now seem to get some posterization. Any 
ideas?
Jim H.